


Learning to Live

by cauldronofdoom



Series: Secret Games [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, OC POV, bastardization of non-MCU comics characters, because MCU is still filling their ranks and I need more people for this, it's the end of a bad relationship and friends are taking sides but it's not meant to be bashing, possible character bashing, tags will be added as the story goes, the OC's aren't going to be a focus, they're just background, this is a wip and I have no idea what will come up in it, which will not end with this chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-26
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-17 02:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/546561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cauldronofdoom/pseuds/cauldronofdoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of a bad break-up, the man who has everything and nothing and the man lost in time must learn to move forward, forgetting something they both cherished. Of course, that would be easier if life, fate, and several political games weren't busy pulling on their strings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The continuation of Truth Comes Out. This chapter may be read as very rude to Steve Rogers, but that's just because of a bad breakup. Especially in the first few days after, people tend to pick sides. It'll calm down.

Tony was sure his hands were shaking. JARVIS was probably the only reason he was able to fly straight, and he spared a moment to be thankful his creation was staying silent and looking out for him.

It was nice to know someone cared. 

He called up Pepper, because he didn’t want to do it later, when he was black-out drunk. 

*Tony? What’s up?*

“I’m headed back to Malibu, Pep. Thought I should give you a heads up on that.” She was still in New York, but she did stay in his house when she had to swing by the LA plant. They had broken up, but it had been as amiable as those things ever were and they were still friends. Besides, he’d had a blonde distraction when she hooked up with Happy…

No, those were thoughts to keep away from. He didn’t need to be thinking about that right now.

*Back to Malibu?* Her voice was bewildered, and he winced at the reminder that he hadn’t made her roll with the punches for the last six months, had in fact been behaving himself admirably… *Why? What’s in LA, Tony?*

“More like what’s not in LA.”

He heard her suck in a breath. She was never stupid, his Pepper. She already knew. *Steve?* Her voice was clipped, asking for a reason instead of confirmation.

“A SHIELD plant. He was after my designs.”

The silence was heavy for a moment, but Pepper’s voice was full of steel when she spoke. “I’ll call Rhodey, he has some leave coming up. I’ve got a grocery service on speed dial, so I’ll have them stock the place before you get there, too. I’ve got meetings all week, but I’ll be there by five your time on Friday. Okay?*

Tony let out a ragged laugh. Pepper was always looking out for him. She loved him, even if not quite in the way they’d hoped at the beginning of their ill-fated relationship. “It sounds like you think you’re my mother, Pep, that’s what it sounds like.”

She was smiling, he could tell. “Please. Destruction and beer are a man’s chocolate and ice cream. What else do people do in these situations? I’m just making sure you can get it all in your house and don’t take the suit out again like you did on that one donut run.”  
*  
“So how likely am I to break my hand if I punch him in the face?” Rhodey’s voice broke into Tony’s reverie, and he turned to give his oldest friend a grin.

“Feeling protective, gumdrop?” He got up to accept Rhodey’s hug before pouring the other man a drink. “Far too likely for my piece of mind. Unless you took War Machine, that is.” He saluted the taller man with his own drink before knocking it back. “What do you think, will Mommy and Daddy let you borrow the car to go beat up an American icon?”

“I’ll just tell them I’m bringing it here for repairs and stress testing.” Rhodey replied, knocking his own drink back. “Right now I’m very interested in how the gauntlets will hold up against super-soldier jaw. It’ll have to be rigorous scientific testing, though, with repeat trials, and maybe using Hammer as a control.”

Tony was laughing by the end of Rhodey’s impassioned little rant, much to the annoyance of his friend if the look on his face was anything to go by. “How much have you had to drink, anyway?”

Tony turned serious in a heartbeat. “Not enough.” He ran his hand through his hair, tugging at it in frustration. “I really thought this was real, you know? And then I learn it was all Nick Fucking Fury fucking with me again.” He gave Rhodey a wry grin. “I should be glad he didn’t stab me in the neck, shouldn’t I? It’d follow the pattern…”

Rhodey sighed and pulled his friend down onto the couch. Despite his vocal protests, Tony was more than drunk enough to cuddle up under his friend’s arm, both ignoring the growing damp patch on the pilot’s uniform shirt.

Rhodey was just about drifting off himself when Tony spoke again, his voice soft and vulnerable in a way he wished he’d never had to hear. “Rhodey? Do you think anyone will ever actually be able to love me?”

He sighed as he ran a hand through his best friend’s hair, momentarily distracted by the subtle differences between his dark skin and Tony’s dark hair that was brought into sharp contrast by the soft light of the reactor. “Yeah, Tony, I do.” He said, cursing his orientation once again for keeping him from being able to be with Tony like they both had hoped so many years ago. They were always going to be almost painfully platonic on his side, and he hated having to friend-zone such an amazing person.

How could that dick have had a chance at Tony and thrown it away for something as unimportant as schematics? He thought, not for the first time. Tony started snoring next to him, and he shifted into a more comfortable position. His best friend needed him, and he wasn’t going to let him down.

Tony didn’t deserve to be let down, though it happened far too often. Rhodey would be here, though, as he always was, ready and willing to help pick up the pieces and protect the human under the steel mask he wore for the public.

It was all he could do, and he cursed Rogers even more for making him do this again.  
*  
“Looking pathetic isn’t going to get you back into anyone’s good graces, you know. We’ve all seen better actors before.” Pepper didn’t even try to hide her smirk as her voice made a buck-naked Steve Rogers jolt and fall over.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… What?” He looked bewildered for a moment before his expression darkened. He’d jumped to his feet at the beginning of his apology, obviously searching for his pants. “Oh. No, no, I’m not fishing for anything. I just… I’m sorry, I wasn’t planning on still being here when you came over. We weren’t expecting you till evening is all. Did Tony send you? I’ll leave, obviously, it’s not like I could really stay after this, even if I thought there might be something to be salvaged…”

“It is evening.” She said, cutting off the ramble coming from the obviously frazzled man before her. “Seven oh nine, to be precise.” She popped the ‘oh’ in emphasis, noting the suppressed flinch at the sharp sound. Interesting.

“Oh.” He replied, staring down at the shirt in his hands with a furrow digging in between his eyebrows. “I didn’t realize it was that late. I’m very sorry. I… I should have been gone by now, shouldn’t I?”

Pepper crossed her arms and leaned against the doorjamb, menace in every line of her body despite her casual pose. “You should have been gone the first time you used his childhood hero worship to rat him out to Fury.” She pointed out, just to watch him flinch again. “You should have been gone before you got a chance to learn his blackmail and emotional manipulation points.” She pushed off and stalked towards him, regretting for a moment the carpet on Tony’s floor. The sharp rapping of her heels would have been overkill on any other day, but she didn’t think she was capable of considering anything overkill at the moment. “You should have been gone before you convinced him you could be happy together.” 

Ste-Rogers looked at the shirt still twisted in his hands with an expression so woebegone she almost believed it was real. She stopped right in front of him, and waited till he raised his eyes before continuing. “Did he ever tell you about Yinsen? Gulmira? Did you text SHIELD the details he gasps when coming up from a nightmare so they’d know where to lean when they put pressure on him? Did you drop him on the couch like a sack of potatoes and take advantage of JARVIS’s lessened monitoring to rifle through the workshop after fucking him? Did you whisper to him as he was drifting off that just one more weapon, and only for SHIELD, wouldn’t hurt? Did you hint that he wasn’t worthy of his father’s legacy, since he was being selfish and keeping Fury’s hands off the Iron Man suit? That would have made your day, wouldn’t it? Then you could have one of their perfect little toy soldiers as backup instead of someone as unreliable as Tony watching your back, hmm?”

She was just about to continue when the sound of cloth tearing brought her to a startled halt. “Stop it!” Rogers hissed, his face close to hers and absolutely livid. “Don’t you dare say things like that about Tony! He’s selfless and loving and brilliant and perfect, as you damn well know! There is no one I’d ever want to see in that armour except him! He gives so much to make sure that the important things are done right, and he pours his whole being, his heart and soul, into what he does out there! He’s worthy of everything and is more, so much more, than even his father could ever have been! Tony is the best, most amazing person I’ve ever had the honour to meet, and I will not listen to you cheapening him like this!”

She met his eyes impassively, her anger not even letting her be worried about enraging a super soldier.   
“You’re the one cheapening him, daring to play with his heart like you did. You turned something he cherished into a fuck with a whore, regardless of it being Fury that paid you, not him.” He flinched again, a full body thing that would have aroused sympathy in any other situation, his eyes dropping to the ruined shirt he was clenching hard enough that his knuckles were white. “Get your jacket and your bike and go. I’ll have your stuff returned to SHIELD in the morning, minus anything that even tangentially touches on his work. That’s being torched so it can’t ever be used against him. I’d better not ever see your face again, Captain Rogers. Secret identity or no, I will slap a restraining order on you so fast your head will spin.”

She shooed him towards the door, almost pushing when he halted just within the room he’d shared with Tony almost every night for the past few weeks. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do love him. Not because SHIELD ordered me to pretend, but because he’s amazing.” His fingers trailed over a silk tie, one of Tony’s favourite ones, resting haphazardly on the table where it had likely landed after being tossed off rather enthusiastically the night before. “Can I… Would it be too much…” He trailed off, his voice forlorn, and Pepper bit her lip worriedly.

Should she let him? Tony loved the tie because it was the colour of Rogers’ eyes, and likely wouldn’t want to see it again. There was no harm in what he asked, regardless of her not believing his confession. She didn’t think he was the type to keep trophies, but she hadn’t thought he’d been the type to play games like he did either… “Fine.” She gritted out, despite being sure she’d regret it in the morning. “But only because that particular article was bound for the incinerator anyway.”

He picked it up tenderly, and she felt her hackles rising and a growl forming in her throat despite having given permission. He didn’t seem to notice, just resumed his journey out of the tower as if he hadn’t stopped to grab a memento.

He didn’t look back, and Pepper wasn’t sure if she preferred it that way or not.  
*  
He’d clenched his fists hard enough during Pepper’s little speech to leave blood all over his jeans. He stared at the faint proof that he’d bled over the breakup with his stomach roiling in disgust. He’d never felt as low, as worthless, as he did now. Even before the serum he’d known who he was and what he stood for, something he didn’t know anymore.

“For the good of the nation.” He remembered the senator all but purring in his ear as the man grasped his shoulder and showed Steve a video of Tony Stark blatantly disrespecting a Senatorial hearing. “Surely you can see why something so powerful in the hands of someone so wild is dangerous. What happens when he gets bored of playing hero? This is only for his amusement, after all.”

Steve had listened, and Steve had rationalized, and now Steve was paying the price for that. Tony was nothing like what he’d been lead to believe. Agent Romanov, who had been the one to write the file on the man, had warned him of that. “Stark’s a lot of things, and capable of being explained on paper is not one of them. Tread carefully.” At the time he’d thought she’d been warning him about Tony, but now he wasn’t so sure. She’d been friendly, in the way only someone who knew what it was like to be unique and worshipped for a mask could be, before he’d taken the assignment, but distant after. He hadn’t even noticed, to wrapped up in his own head, and then with Tony.

Coulson, too, had been distant since he’d spoken with the Senator. The man had been all but bubbly before, so nervous and worshipful that Steve had often blushed. After… Steve wondered briefly if he’d broken the man’s trust in heroes. Captain America shouldn’t have done what Steve had done. Steve knew that, had always known that, but he’d done it anyways. For the first time, he was glad the people closest to him hadn’t survived to see the man he’d become. His mother, who taught him about God and forgiveness, Bucky, who defended him and believed in Steve’s worth, Erskine, who thought he was a good man, and Peggy, who hated those games with a passion and refused to play them herself. They wouldn’t have believed he could sink so far, become so awful…

“Captain?” Steve jerked his head up, coming face-to-face with one of the last people he wanted to see right now. Coulson was staring quizzically at him, an odd expression for such a highly trained man. “I wasn’t expecting you at base today. Your itinerary says you were planning on spending it with your…” The hesitation was only a second, and Steve wondered how long it had been there, “Mark.”

Steve laughed, a hollow sound that made Coulson’s eyes widen in shock. His hands clenched again, no doubt gouging crescents of flesh out around the nails and adding further blood to the stains on his pants. “Don’t call me that.” He grated out. “I am not Captain America. Not anymore. Captain America obviously stayed buried in the ice, and Steve Rogers doesn’t deserve that sort of respect.” Coulson was moving towards him slowly and carefully, like Steve was a wild animal he was trying not to spook. “You’ve known that since I took that mission on Tony. I’ve seen you.”

“I did have serious reservations about that mission, but it was not my call to make.” Coulson responded, his voice as controlled as ever. “Did something happen today? Agent Sanderson has been running around and causing more trouble than usual. It almost seemed like he was trying to get the paperwork to just haul Stark in and hide him here.”

“Sanderson fucked everything up, if that’s what you’re asking.” Steve replied, disgust heavy in his voice. “He called to bitch at me for my ‘lack of progress’ when Tony was in the room. He overheard.” 

Coulson sucked in a startled breath at that. “You need to see Director Fury.” His voice was flat. “He needs to know about this development, and he needs to know of it yesterday.”

“I don’t give a fuck what Director Fury needs!” Steve yelled, tears blurring his vision. “It’s his fault, his and this damnable mission’s, that Tony left! I hate this! These missions where people are used and thrown away, this secrecy, the lies… I’m not suited for intelligence gathering, I’m not allowed to protect people, or even be a dancing monkey, I don’t have the training for your special ops, and I hate how you do things. I quit.”

“What?” He took a moment of vindictive pleasure in the way the unflappable Phil Coulson gaped at him.

“I quit.” He repeated, rolling the words around in his head and discovering he’d been thinking about it for a while now. Of course, he’d been planning on going straight to Tony afterwards, explaining, and throwing himself on the man’s mercy as far as living arrangements went. Steve had his SHIELD pay from the last six months, but wasn’t foolish enough to think he could live on that for long, especially since he had no government ID besides his doctored drivers licence and appeared in no databanks.

Getting a new job would be tough.

He could see these thoughts chase each other over Coulson’s face. “Captain, are you aware…”

“I know.” He cut the man off with a handwave. “I don’t care. This has been a long time coming. I quit.”

Coulson was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quite a bit softer, almost hesitant. “Captain, you are aware that quitting won’t convince Stark to take you back, right? He probably won’t believe you when you say it.”

“I know.” His eyes were blurry with tears again, but he didn’t care. “It’s not about Tony. Well, it is, but it’s more about how you treat him. That’s not something I can stomach doing to anyone else ever again, and it’s not something I can stand by and watch, working with people who think it’s okay.”

Coulson pursed his lips. “Stark is a special case.” He said finally, the words heavy with what they didn’t say.

Steve had already figured it out, though. He was out of his time, but he wasn’t stupid. “Senator Brandt has too much military funding sway to ignore, and he hates Tony.” Was his blunt reply. “SHIELD still gave me the impression things were different. I didn’t think it was as big a deal nowadays when I started. I’m not changing my mind.”

“You do realize everything down to the clothes you’re wearing belongs to SHIELD, right?”

Steve got off his bike (he was still straddling the bike? Odd) and handed the keys over without a word. He loved the bike, but not that much. Then he dug his cell phone, music player, and ID card out too. “I’m afraid you’re SOL on the clothing, though, since I’m not streaking. There are children out.” He turned to go.

“Steve, wait!” It was the first time Coulson had used his first name, though he’d told the man to do so in that first week when everything was new and Coulson was helping him through it. He turned back, one eyebrow raised quizzically.

“Here.” Coulson held out a card. “It’s my SHIELD number, but I always answer it. Just… If you need anything…”

He smiled as he took it, though he promised himself to never call. He was done with SHIELD. Tony was done with him, he was done with SHIELD, and it was about time he figured out Steve Rogers’ place in the 21st century.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony woke up tucked into bed and with his internal clock telling him it was far later than the sun coming through the large windows would have him believe. “JARVIS?” He asked, burrowing his head in the pillows and ignoring the low-grade headache his hangover was giving him.

“Good morning, sir. The time is 7:23 AM on the twelfth of September. Current temperature is…”

“It’s not seven in the morning, JARVIS. There is no way it’s that early.”

He could swear his AI sounded hesitant for a moment. “It is currently 7:24 Pacific Standard Time, sir, though it would be 10:24 in New York.” He frowned. 

“Pacific? Why am I in Malibu? Did I finally convince Steve to come check out…” He trailed off as that name brought up memories he’d have been happier not remembering. “Oh. Nevermind, JARVIS, I remember. You didn’t let him take anything when he left, did you?” There was a sketchbook that Steve kept down in Tony’s lab, and him reclaiming that could be a terrible thing, regardless of who it technically belonged to. 

“Ms. Potts allowed him one item that wasn’t on the hazard list and I deferred to her judgement on that.”

“One item, huh?” Tony mused, pulling himself out of bed and lurching for the bathroom. “What was it?”

“Your blue tie, sir. The one with the matching cufflinks.” A tie? He couldn’t imagine how SHIELD could possibly use that against him. It was probably safe for Steve to have, though Tony couldn’t figure out why he’d want it. It was just a blue silk tie. Tony loved it because it matched the colour of Steve’s eyes, and even Board Meetings were more endurable when he kept catching glimpses of that colour out of the corner of his eye…

He wrenched his thoughts from that with some effort and concentrated instead on what he was going to do now. He couldn’t just take this, or SHIELD would never give up. Agent Romanov didn’t work, Captain Rogers didn’t work…. Who would they send next? Would they just have people try to hack his mainframe? Would they have the elusive Hawkeye he’d heard about shoot him out of the sky with an EMP or something? (Note to self, bump up EMP shielding). 

There was only so much he could do without intel. “JARVIS, you up for a little highly-illegal government hacking?”

“For you sir, always.”  
*  
“Well. This is interesting.” Tony sipped what was probably his third cup of coffee and frowned at the screen before him. 

“What, the latest Maxim cover?” Rhodey asked from the doorway, holding a box of Tony’s favourite doughnuts in one hand and his own coffee in the other.

Tony perked up at the sound of his voice and turned, a wide smile breaking across his face when he saw the sugary offering. “You brought me doughnuts! I suppose I might just have it in me to forgive waking up to find the Tesla gone. You didn’t even leave me a note.” He mock pouted and Rhodey laughed. 

“My truck started making a slightly odd rumble about two days ago. I was just about to take it to a mechanic when Pepper called to tell me my favourite one was coming back to town.”

Tony raised his eyebrow and grabbed a doughnut. “You could have called.” He pointed out, taking a bite and washing it down with a gulp of coffee. “It takes all of an hour or so to get here from New York, and I love flying.” Rhodey could read the faint hint of betrayal in Tony’s lines, the idea that Rhodey would let anyone else touch his baby. 

“Yeah, but…” He didn’t really want to say why he didn’t, but Tony wasn’t a genius for nothing.

“Rhodey,” He said, one pale hand covering Rhodey’s darker one, “You know that you’re always going to be my best friend, right? Even if I’m in a relationship’s honeymoon phase, I’ll always have time for you.” His trademark smirk came up, eclipsing the solemn expression he’d worn just seconds earlier. “I might be late, and I might talk you into stupid things while I’m here, but you’ll always be my honeybear.”

It changed from day to day whether he was happy he’d rescued that too-young kid from flooding the dorm laundry room, but today he was definitely glad he’d taken the two minutes to turn off the machine and explain the settings even though it had made him late for class. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a giant pile of mush in the mornings. Obviously you haven’t had enough coffee to remember that you’re allergic to feelings.” He grinned himself, easily deflecting the conversation from Tony’s latest relationship.

“There is never enough coffee.” Tony agreed arily, waving his hand in dismissal. “So what’s wrong with your lovely lady? She jealous of my Audi?”

Rhodey shook his head, grinning. “Just some grinding. Something’s not quite in alignment and it’s tossing the rest of the engine’s perfection out with it. It’s a quick fix. There was no point making you fly two hours just to spend fifteen minutes on my truck. I’m more interested in what you were looking at when I showed up.”

A shifty look came over Tony’s face, and Rhodey immediately straightened. “Can you keep a secret?”

Rhodey leveled him with an unimpressed glare. “We’re still allowed to cross the Mexican border, aren’t we? And Canada, we’re still allowed there too. If I was going to spill your secrets for duty or money, I’d have done it long before now.”

“Canada was a misunderstanding.”

“Police chase, Tony. In a stolen Zamboni.”

“I was drunk.”

“You were also seventeen. And I don’t think any of those factors would have swayed a judge.”

Tony turned his nose up, obviously ignoring the argument now that he was losing. “Anyway, I was busy hacking SHIELD’s files when you showed up and distracted me with sugary delight and poisoned tongues.”

Rhodey sighed. “Do I have to tell you how bad of an idea that is?”

“Do I have to tell you how necessary it is? Romanov, Rogers… Do you really think they’ll just stop?”

Rhodey shook his head, disgusted once again with what some people would do to get and keep power. “All right, what did you find?”  
*  
“We’re severing our ties with SHIELD.” Pepper’s voice was firm and no-nonsense, though she did feel bad for the man on the other side of the desk. Usually she liked Phil.

“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that that isn’t a good idea.” He said, trademark bland expression in place.

She snorted her reply. “And you think sending in your precious super soldier to seduce him was? What did you think was going to come of it? Would you have pressured Captain Rogers to marry him when the question was finally popped? That’s legal in New York now, you know, and Tony would have gotten to it eventually.”

Coulson (not Phil, not now) flinched slightly, but Pepper wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate tell or if she had startled a real reaction out of him. “By that point it was anticipated that Captain Rogers would have finished his mission and moved on to other things.”

Pepper was silent for a moment before leaning over her desk to better menace the man before her. “And in exactly what reality were you expecting that to have a good outcome? Tony isn’t dangerous because of his suit, as you well know. Tony is dangerous because of his drive, his focus, his uncrossable lines, his charisma, and his massive intellect. The very best you could have hoped for would be Tony deactivating and hunting down his suit knock-offs like he’s doing his weaponry. It’s far more likely he would become a revolution leader and overthrown the entire government before flushing your agency and contacts out with a very salt the earth philosophy. Was that really an endgame you were willing to risk?”

Coulson rubbed his forehead, looking just tired for a moment. He seemed to be thinking, so Pepper let him be for a moment. When he looked up, his expression was rueful. “I just realized how utterly ridiculous my usual dilemma solver of “What would Captain America do?” is in this situation.” He admitted with a pained laugh. “Considering this whole mess is because he didn’t do what Captain America should have done.”

He leaned forward himself, making the space between them conspiratorial. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve been forbidden by clearance levels to discuss. I’m going to suggest that you don’t tell Mr. Stark, though I’m sure he’s already well on his way to hacking our files and discovering it: Senator Sterns is on the World Security Council.”

Pepper gasped, shocked. She knew she wasn’t supposed to know the significance of that particular group, but the knowledge was just too much to silently process. Sterns hated Tony, and yet there’d been nothing from him for months. No public denouncements, no sneaky lawsuits, no plots…

Except for Steve.

“You mean to tell me that bastard was behind hurting Tony like this?” _And hurting Steve_ , a little voice inside said, but she ignored it. “And you guys were fine with this?”

Phil slapped his hands on the table, professional demeanor obviously failing in the face of her accusation. “I was just as fine with these orders as you were with Stark’s plan to turn his twenty-eighth birthday into an orgy, despite inviting the paparazzi himself!” He hissed, his voice full of poison. “Captain America was my childhood hero! It’s one thing to know that sometimes the greater good requires sacrifices, but quite another to realize the person you’d always looked to for guidance on ‘too far’ is perfectly willing to play those games!”

He slumped again, looking defeated. “It was… difficult, realizing that Captain America really is just Steve Rogers, and just as fallible as the rest of us. However, someone still needs to watch that line. What I do is more important than a few more broken hearts joining the ranks of the cynics in the world.”

Pepper’s face softened. She knew what it was to know intimately the human underbelly every celebrity had. Even heroes, in the end, were nothing more than human. “Phil…” She began, not sure what to say, but he cut her off before it became necessary. 

“Don’t.” He said, shaking his head. “There is nothing that is ever going to make a hero becoming a person any easier. I made a bad call. I put Rogers’ decency up against his orders. Based on his wartime record, I expected him to either own up or break it off long ago. Certainly I expected that before he was made. Stark was not collateral, not to me. I just… I didn’t expect things to go this far, and I expected Captain Rogers to do the right thing.”

“… Even without the current circumstances, did you even consider what this would do to Tony?”

Phil leaned back in his chair, expression wry. “I did. But I still believe in heroes, and Tony Stark has never given me a reason to believe he won’t stand back up regardless of what previously toppled him, nor how far he fell. I just thought… Well, I thought that the two of them meeting, despite the circumstances, would mean both would have someone to hold out a hand when they fell. Someone to protect them when they were too battered to do so themselves. Someone to rely on.”

Pepper was quiet for a moment, processing this. “The Avengers Initiative wasn’t Fury’s idea, was it? It was yours.”

He ducked his head slightly, a more bashful move than Pepper had ever seen this man make before. “Stark was considered too unreliable by the brass, and he’s really the only big name hero we had. Fury sided with me, especially after… an altercation in New Mexico, but there simply weren’t enough people to fill the ranks and make a team. Do you remember Agent Romanov?” She nodded, confused by the non sequitor, but he quickly continued, “She took out Hammer’s facility almost single-handedly, hacked Vanko’s program, and was instrumental in defeating that plot last year.” He was silent for a moment, obviously trying to decide what to tell her. “She’s Fury’s favourite, but I tend to work with her quite often. My favourite field agent is just as competent, though they have different skill sets. Both rank in my top five for deadliest, most efficient people I’ve ever known. They terrify younger agents, and quite a few seasoned ones. That’s separately. Together? Even a force like the Avengers wouldn’t be able to stop them. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle, and boost each other to almost unimaginable heights.”

He was silent for a moment again. “I wanted that for Stark, too.”  
*  
Steve ran. 

He wanted to run until his lungs burned and his legs wobbled, until his head was spinning and his sides aching, but the damn serum wouldn’t let him. Despite wanting nothing more than to feel some physical pain to match his emotional agony, his body just would not cooperate. 

He’d reached the outskirts of New York before he stopped, well into night. He rested his hand on his knees as he turned to look at the city he’d called home for so long. 

_Tony’s not there_. The thought came to his mind unbidden, but he couldn’t help turning it over and over, trying to make sense of the emotions that came with it. Loss, yes, and regret. Pain. Anger. And an odd sense of… not precisely melancholy, but close. Even with the addition of things like Tony’s Stark Tower, the skyline was as familiar as an old friend. But it no longer felt like home.

He tilted his head to the side, confused. New York had always been his home. If it wasn’t any more, where would he go?

_Tony_. His heart whispered, and he pinched his nose in an effort to distract himself. There was no way he could chase Tony down. For one, it wasn’t as easy as finding his old apartment. He’d probably gone back to Malibu for now, since that was his in a way only the Tower could match. Still, if he even heard a whisper of Steve showing up out there, he’d be gone so fast that he’d probably leave his boots behind.

Still, there was nothing for him in New York now. Perhaps it was a good idea to check out the rest of the country he’d died for. 

Maybe he could find something out there to make him believe in doing anything for it again.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony was furious. 

He’d been angry since Rogers’ phone had ruined his afterglow, but this was even worse. He, of all people, should know how easy it was for people to purposely fuck over others for their own gain. He’d gotten a very pointed lesson in exactly that when his first girlfriend had admitted at the end of the school year that she’d only been sleeping with him so she could copy his homework while he was snoozing. For some reason, though, knowing someone in a position of power had ordered someone else to whore themselves out made it even worse. 

Senator Sterns had given Rogers the assignment to get toys from Tony. ‘By any means necessary’ was actually even in the mission briefing (thank you Agent Romanov that they knew him well enough for a file that thick). 

Rhodey could tell he was planning something. Well, he’d have been an awful best friend if he couldn’t, so Tony didn’t even mind the wary glances and nervous ticks. But he didn’t pressure Tony to reveal his plans, just cautioned him to think things through.

Tony always thought things through.

It didn’t look that way from the outside, but he did. Stopping arms production wasn’t a ‘ready, fire, aim’ situation. He’d planned for ten weeks how he was going to do that. Iron Man wasn’t a moment of hopeless rage at Gulmira, it was born from the realization that I can do this too, I can help, when he’d escaped the Ten Rings. Granted, he hadn’t expected to unveil his invention quite that way, but Rhodey had fallen prey to the belief that he didn’t know what he was doing and had turned his back. Even his casual fucks were just because he knew everyone would eventually leave, and it was easier to let it not mean anything than to pick up the pieces after.

Rogers was proof of how damaging letting someone in could be.

There was little enough Tony could do to Captain Steve Rogers, considering everyone but SHIELD still considered the man seventy years dead. Senator Sterns, however, did not have the dubious protection of a KIA designation.  
*  
Working for Ellen DeGeneres was a dream come true for Kelsey. She’d always been interested in film, and getting to run a camera for such an important show was more than she could have wished right out of school. She’d gotten a lucky break when another cameraman had been forced to resign due to a family emergency and she’d just been there. 

Today they’d gotten a sudden change in line up as Tony Stark had agreed, last minute, to show up. He’d bumped actor Chris Hemsworth from his spot, but the blonde had taken it quite well, agreeing to stay in a hotel on Stark’s dime and to go drinking with him later. Or at least he’d seemed to take it well when Stark had breezed up to him backstage and made his proposal. 

They’d exchanged a few soft words that had caused Hemsworth to grimace in sympathy, and Kelsey was wildly curious as to what the inventor had said to get that soft expression. She had a good feeling that it was going to be revealed during this episode, and anticipation was twisting her stomach into horrible knots. 

She shook her distraction off as Ellen called her surprise guest out to confused yet heartfelt applause. It was finally time to figure this out.  
*  
Marlene sighed the seventh time someone asked her if she’d seen that days episode of Ellen. Every time she had replied that no, she taped them, and she’d been at work since before it started. Old Eddie, though, just would not shut up about it, even though she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

“It’s a damn shame, that’s what it is. No decency left in this world. Back when I was young we’d never have stood for this, I’ll tell you that! By golly, a man should be judged on his actions, not held against his youthful indiscretions all his life. Disgraceful, that’s what it is. I assure you that the current government will not be getting my vote, not if they okay things like this. We gotta take a stand on this!”

“Eddie,” Marlene broke in, her voice exasperated, “What are you talking about?”

“The old lady called me in to watch highlights of one of her daytime shows.” Eddie grouched, looking every inch the petulant old man he was. “Don’t usually watch that trash, but it’s better than setting that harpy off. That young Stark boy was on it, and he had some pretty dirty little secrets to share.”

“So you’re mad at Stark? Again?” She heaved a sigh. It was even odds whether Eddie hated Stark because he could never figure out technology or because the man was young and handsome, but the old codger had never had a kind word for Tony Stark in his life.

“Not Stark.” Hank said, flushing lightly as he broke into the conversation. He was always a little shy around Marlene, but she hadn’t decided what to do about it yet. One failed marriage had left her with two kids of her own, and she wasn’t sure if she was prepared to take on Hank’s three in place of their dead mother, God rest her soul. “Not this time. You should probably flick on the news. Even though it was a talk show, it should make the highlights.”

Marlene shrugged and got on a stool to reach the ancient tv over the diner counter. No one was watching the golf game anyway.

“… Things going with that handsome blonde you’ve been seen with? You ready to tell us who he is yet?” There was Ellen, just as Hank had thought, being replayed on the evening news. 

Tony Stark was in the frame with her, and he only smiled wryly at her question. “I’m afraid that actually kinda crashed and burned, sweetheart.” He admitted, looking resigned. Ellen’s face fell as soon as the news sunk in.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. You guys really looked good together, and you seemed happy.” She was genuinely upset, but Marlene could see the curiosity she held barely contained in her slight fidgets.

Tony’s expression turned grim at that. “I thought so, but there’s only really one thing you can do when you find out your boyfriend is a military spy under orders to steal your intellectual property when your back is turned. Apparently someone decided that my suits should be government owned, even after the Supreme Court ruled them mine last year.”

Marlene sucked in a breath. Someone had done that? Ordered some poor young man to seduce someone in order to steal from them? She knew what it was like to have to go above and beyond to keep a job in tight economic times, and she didn’t envy the man in question the soul-searching he must have done before accepting the assignment. She was a bit of a romantic, and had been following Stark’s relationship with avid interest. The idea of someone so completely his own man being willing to settle down after falling in love always brought a tear to her eye. She’d really thought, looking at the pictures in her magazines, that Stark and his mystery man would make it.

The story title emblazoned across the bottom of the screen left no doubt that she’d been mistaken. STARK DUMPS MYSTERY MAN AFTER EVIDENCE OF GOVERNMENT ORDERED CORPORATE ESPIONAGE SURFACES said it all.

Movement at the doorway drew her gaze, and she stared in complete shock at the pale, sickly looking face of someone she’d never expected to see outside of a magazine picture. It was Stark’s mysterious ex, looking shaken and wrecked and standing at the door of her work. She considered tossing him out for a moment, but compassion eventually won out and she caught his attention, waving him over to one of the quieter corners.

He shuffled towards it, all the time keeping his eyes trained of the TV. There was a hungry look in them, something she’d have labeled possessive if not for the wistfulness also present. Even after he sat down, he continued to just gaze at the screen with that same odd expression until the story switched to something about protests in China.

Marlene approached tentatively, despite having years of experience waiting even on people she found personally horrid. “Hi there. I’m Marlene, and I’ll be your waitress today.” She handed over one of the rarely-used menus. “Would you like a moment, or are you ready to start?”

“He hasn’t been sleeping.” The blonde’s voice was dry and a lot harsher than she’d expected. He sounded like he hadn’t had anything to drink all day. “Probably not eating, either, but that’s not something you can tell over the TV in less than a week.”

Marlene bit her lip, thinking hard. “You know, we may not always like him, but we will all stand behind Mr. Stark in a situation like this. It’s probably best you keep quiet on this in public.”

He gave her a pained smile. “What makes you so sure I’m unaware of that?”

She pursed her lips, reverting to mother-mode in an instant. “Getting into fights doesn’t prove anything except that you’re to young to be trusted in these situations.” She informed him, exactly as she had her six-year-old when he’d come home from school with a split lip. “Beating people up is the mark of a bully, and trying to get beat up is the mark of a coward.”

He gave a full body flinch at her uncompromising words, his lips twisting down almost viciously. “Coward I’ll own, and even ‘bully’ probably isn’t that far from how I’ve apparently turned out.” He propped his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands, self-disgust evident in every line of his body.

She hesitated then, before continuing delicately. She knew non-religious people often responded badly to suggestions like this, but, “Have you considered seeing a priest?” He had the look of someone who was in dire need of a confession.

“I can’t.” His voice was almost wistful again, so she decided the suggestion hadn’t been a complete bust.

“Because of what you did? If you regret it, Jesus will understand….”

He waved her off with one hand and a tired chuckle. “No, I mean I can’t. I swore myself to silence over most of the situation I got myself into. That’s why I had no option to talk to someone else when I started to realize how deep I was getting in. If I can’t come totally clean, discussing it with a priest will only add to my guilt.” He twisted his face to peer up at her. “Plus saying I’m military is almost laughably inadequate. It would be irresponsible of me to put an innocent life in danger just because I want to rant about how stupid I was. God will hear me anyway, whether I say it out loud or not.”

She hesitated again, but Marlene was notorious in her town for being a soft touch. “If you need to talk that badly… I won’t ask for specifics. I can tell you what I know or have gathered from the news, and you can fill in what you’re allowed to explain.”

That got her a much more real smile, even though it was still heavily tinged with grief. “I’d appreciate that, but you’re at work. I wouldn’t ask you to drop everything for me.”

She considered him for a moment, then nodded. “I get off in an hour, and the kids are at my sister’s house for the night. We can have a coffee.”  
*  
Steve was both surprised and humbled that someone so obviously angry with him would take the time to talk with him about his mistakes. It made him both proud to be American and embarrassed to have disgraced his country’s ideals while having the gall to wear the flag.

He continued to stare at the screen anytime Tony was on it, cataloguing the slight changes that had already affected the man he loved. Tony looked… almost brittle. He hadn’t seemed so breakable since the press conference right after Afghanistan, and it tore at Steve’s heart to know he was equating himself with kidnapping, torturing, mercenary terrorists. 

He sipped at the coffee the waitress (Margie? Mabel? He hadn’t really listened, had watched Tony like a hawk instead) brought him and picked at the food she’d placed before him. He didn’t remember ordering, so he’s not sure if he did or if she just decided he needed to be fed (she seemed like a mother, and they always tried to feed him, even now that he’s big) and had ordered for him.

His metabolism burned quickly enough that he almost always needed to eat, if he had the chance, but today he just couldn’t stomach food. He knew his body needed it (he’d eaten only sporadically ever since the breakup, to lost in his head to hear what his body was saying) but he felt almost physically ill every time he took a bite.

“You should eat. Starving doesn’t help anyone.” She was back, and Steve smiled reflexively at her. His mother had taught him manners, and they almost always came to his rescue when he was out of his depth. 

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m afraid I’m just not feeling like food right now. I appreciate your concern, though.”

She snorted a laugh, and Steve found himself offereing her an honest smile in return. “Marlene is fine, and what you’re feeling like is punishing yourself, yes? Eat.”

He bit back a grin at her no-nonsense tone and attacked the food on his plate with more appetite than he’d had for a week. It was nice to talk to someone who’d tell him things as they are, not sugar-coat them for his obviously heartbroken self (not that he thinks truckers can’t be kind, but it was a bit of a shock when the man who’d picked him up on the side of the road had clumsily and tentatively tried to get him to talk. A shock, and also very, very awkward. Tony would have laughed). 

“Well,” She drawled, obviously amused. “You respond well to straight talk, and you’ve very aware of what’s happened and why. Care to explain your obviously faulty train of logic here?”

Steve squirmed under her stern gaze, unable to meet her gaze. “It’s just… There were orders, and then he was so Tony… And I didn’t know…. I just couldn’t say….”

“So you got orders to manipulate him, accepted them, discovered you liked him, and then hid your background like a coward and didn’t ‘fess up? That sound about right?” Steve was flushing with shame, but nodded.

Her voice was skeptical. “You are aware we’re talking about Tony Stark, right? What on earth gave you the idea that messing with him would be a good idea?”

Steve fidgeted again, still twitchy due to her direct stare and serious questions. “As for that… I honestly didn’t know. I didn’t… growing up, I didn’t really ever hear much about SI. It just… wasn’t in my zone, I guess? Then I joined the military and fought, and it’s hard to get good intel on civilian life while overseas. Then I came back, and people were briefing me with all of his public scandals, and tearing him down in front of me, and I just… I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about what it would mean to be in the spotlight all the time, I didn’t think about the stupid things I did when I was younger that I’m so glad no one knows about, and I didn’t think about the fact that they had years to pick the worst of his bad days from. Then I met him, and he was what they said: rude, dismissive, flighty, and undisciplined. Then I got to know him, and… Sure, he’s what they say he is, but he’s also so much more. He’s utterly brilliant, he’s kind at odd times, he’s snarky because that’s just who he is, he doesn’t mean to be rude, and totally loyal to the few people he considers worth the time to be with. And… At that point I turned into a coward, because how do you tell the most amazing person you’ve ever met that you originally sought out his company because you wanted something from him, especially when he gives you this wondering little smile that makes it obvious he’s not used to people liking him for him?”

His head is in his hands again at the end of his little tirade, and he startles when he feels a hand settle softly onto his shoulder. “I don’t know.” Marlene admitted, her voice soft. “But I do know that he deserved to hear the truth from you.”

Steve was silent for a moment, contemplating the thoughts he’d had in the moment before everything went to hell. “I know. I meant to tell him. I kept trying to say something, anything, to him about it, but I could never force the words out. That last day… I think I would have actually said it, given another hour or so. I had something else to tell him, something I’d been putting off for a while because I knew I’d have to confess my motivations first.”

Her trepidation is obvious in her voice. “And what was that?”

Steve dropped his head to the table, tears finally falling. “That I love him. I… I never even got the chance to tell him that I love him. And that’s all my fault too.”


	4. Chapter 4

Tony was very busy for the next week. It was all planned, but he still found it incredibly wearying to be rushing from meetings to press conferences to interviews to R&D playdates and back. All the designing he managed to get done was with either a full team or at the Air Force base with Rhodey and their other engineers. He barely slept, though he was careful to eat.

So busy was he, in fact, that obviously he couldn’t be the one hacking into Senator Stern’s files and posting evidence of every underhanded, grasping, greedy deal he’d ever made. Obviously he wasn’t the one that discovered the backups of a Captain Rogers’ orders, the ones demanding that he get weapons from Stark ‘by any means necessary’. 

There were conspiracy theories, of course. There always were. That he’d figured this all out beforehand (true), that he’d set a delay on files and was uncovering things himself (false. He didn’t need to do that), that he’d led the poor soldier on in an effort to lure in Senator Sterns (very, very false), and that this was all a plot by the good senator’s biggest rival (false, but Tony was totally rooting for the man now). Fury was smart enough to keep his people out of it, but Agent Sanderson (who, it turned out, had only gotten his position and Level Four clearance due to being Sterns sister’s youngest) had been hung out to dry. Tony read through them and laughed. He even let JARVIS loose on a few of the more ridiculous ones (seriously, what did tentacle aliens have to do with anything?) in an effort to stir the pot.

Most people, though, accepted Tony’s word. They knew how proud he was, and how much it was taking out of him to admit he’d been hoodwinked. Enough people had been through bad breakups with people who had wanted arm candy, a promotion, money, or influence that there was an outpouring of sympathy he hadn’t experienced since returning from captivity. He’d been counting on that. People may not always like Tony Stark, but they did feel proprietorial over him. Then there was Iron Man. Who would support the active undermining of a hero who had allowed the military to pull their sons and daughters out of active warzones by privatizing world peace? Who would accept a government that would do such dastardly things as order a man to debase himself for worldly goods?

As soon as his name was reputably linked to the scandal that was the shattered remains of Tony’s love life, Sterns’ future had disappeared.

That wasn’t enough to appease the infuriated mob of nerds who considered Tony Stark to be a minor technological god. Watergate wasn’t even as much of a mess as this scandal, thanks to computers. Every dirty little secret in Washington DC was being aired. The president was found innocent of anything but appointing a few bad eggs here and there, but people were mostly ignoring him with all the other fish to fry. 

And Tony hadn’t even been near a computer.

It wasn’t something he was proud of, but it was something he now considered necessary. Romanov had failed, Rogers had failed, and the legal system had failed. Tony had no interest in learning what they would do next in an attempt to separate him from his brainchildren like the suit and his weapons. His reasoning was not lost on a good percentage of the population, either. They clearly saw his obvious ‘is it worth it?’ question.

The government hadn’t answered him yet. 

His actions, starting with a naming of names two days after his startling announcement on Ellen, had clearly screamed ‘I have nothing to hide’. He’d answered every single question reporters had asked him about the relationship, keeping only two things hidden from the public: That Rogers was Captain America (which he’d signed legal documents to not reveal, even before meeting the man), and that he’d been in love with him.

He’d been in love with him. He was in love with him, as painful as the admission was, even to himself. That morning, lying in bed and curled up with the greatest thing to ever happen to him, he had been so close to saying it. If not for that phone call, he would have. He thanked whatever power loved fucking with him that it had taken pity on making him obviously that pathetic.

What would Rogers have done, had he said it? It was a question Tony tormented himself with when he saw a flash of blonde out of the corner of his eye and turned with a smile, or found himself comparing the blue of the sky to intent eyes he could have sworn held devotion, or realized he’d once again thought of the man who had so callously worked him over as Steve.

It was a question he wished he could let go of, soul destroying as it was. Would he have laughed, outright astonished at the very idea that Tony could love someone (he did, he did all the time, they just never loved him back)? Would he have slid his body over and kissed Tony senseless, avoiding the declaration altogether? Would he have blushed and muttered something about moving too fast, guilting Tony into regretting saying it (oh, God, would he have tried to guilt trip Tony into making weapons? Even in his mind, that one seemed too farfetched)? Would the decency that had apparently characterized the man back during WWII have caused him to end the deception, once he knew how far in Tony was?

Or would his devotion to duty and acting skills been enough for him to look Tony in the eye and say, “I love you too.”? How far would he have taken it? The altar? Was that the plan? Marry Tony, get everything shifted to him in the will (wouldn’t have happened. No one was ever going to bump Pepper from her spot as his beneficiary), and then have some random ‘activist’ assassinate him? Would he have been one more in a line of sacrifices considered less important than the mission (a lie, Tony knew. Every single life was precious. None were disposable)? 

He had nightmares where that happened. Where he was a blissfully happy newlywed and Rogers was sharpening knives in the spare room (they still didn’t terrify him as much as the ones where he tortured himself with imagining Steve saying it and meaning it, of them being together through thick and thin like romantics had promised all through history. Those ones, they meant that it could still happen. That he still loved the man, and might be talked into forgiving him. That he might set himself up willingly for another shot like this). 

Even those thoughts, damning as they were, weren’t enough to quash that blissful, peaceful moment after waking from a dream of golden hair, laughing blue eyes, and miles of flawless skin. That moment when he reached for Steve, still convinced that this man would be the one to return his love, only to find the bed cold and empty, his hopes and dreams dissolving like a name in the sand under the force of the waves.

Steve didn’t love him, never had. Tony had been projecting that stupid look in his stupid eyes, and the sooner he accepted that, the better things would be.  
*  
Pepper was torn. Part of her wanted to fly into a violent rage, destroying everything around her (what she was holding), while part of her wanted to cherish every hint of something that had been so wonderful before being destroyed. Because she was holding Steve Rogers sketchbook, and it was telling her something that made her want to cry. 

Rogers had told her the truth.

She’d remembered he’d had a sketchbook down in Tony’s workshop, and that Tony still had never been allowed to look at it. (“You should see his blush, Pep.” He’d told her, not even hesitating over being denied something. “It’s seriously adorable. It’s like a box of kittens and puppies held by adorable, well-behaved children riding rainbow coloured ponies.”) He’d insisted he couldn’t show Tony because he wasn’t very good, they were just rough works, but Tony had always denied the very idea that it could be true. “He’s Steve, Pep.” Tony had insisted. “He’s perfect, and I really don’t think his art is going to be where that stops being true.” 

She agreed with that sentiment, looking at the pages before her. People she’d never met stared up at her, and she was sure she could pick them out of a crowd now if she’d had too (except she never could, because she knew who was in them. Tony had called her in a panic after Steve’s first nightmare featuring the pretty woman (Peggy Carter, who he’d only missed by days), rakishly handsome James Barnes (and she could see how he’d managed to get even skinny Steve double dates), a scholarly man who must surely be Dr. Erskine (Captain America’s first failure, in his own eyes, and the perfect match for Iron Man’s Yinsen), and a lovely lady who had Steve’s cheekbones and was likely his beloved mother. All were gone, lost to the ravages of desperation, war, and time). 

They featured prominently in the first portrait of Tony. They glared judgement down on a man who was a twisted parody of the man she knew. His lips curled in a cruel smirk that almost matched the playful one she’d kissed not too long ago. His eyes, which always danced with humour, inventiveness, and mischief, were cold, haughty, and hard as slate. His posture was arrogant and clearly dismissive, when she knew from long years of knowing Tony that he was never that stiff, never that formal (she’d wished otherwise before, but not like this. Never like this).

The only thing that kept her from ripping the whole book up right then was the hesitant affection showing through tousled curls, the faint feeling of overcompensation that the too-heavy lines gave off, and the delicate detailing on the hands, which both the artist and she knew were the subject’s favourite body parts. Despite its intentional cruelty, the picture betrayed a hesitant, disbelieving affection that anyone not familiar with how charming and sweet (in his own silly, incomprehensible way) Tony Stark could be would not likely understand.

As the pictures went on, the affection became less guarded, and the exaggerated flaws almost vanished. She would be the first to admit Tony was often brash, crude, arrogant, and infuriating, but that was barely a hint of his personality. 

She paused for a moment on a drawing that drew to mind a particular day she’d love to forget. Tony had been on an Iron Man mission and gotten hurt. He’s absolutely refused to see a doctor about the cut on his forehead, despite her fears of a concussion. From the look of the ice pack he was holding to his shoulder and the bandage looped around his skull, Steve had gotten Tony to let him play doctor himself (she cut herself off before wondering if they’d also ‘played doctor’, a tactic she’d used more than once while dating him to get Tony to accept some form of first aid). 

The strokes were too heavy, that was the first thing she noticed. They also wobbled, none of the clean lines usually present in Steve’s work showing through. Tony was lovingly detailed, down to the scar on his elbow from blowing up his first school lab at ten, but the background was just misty shapes, despite the holograms having been of the Iron Man suit (he always worked on the suit after a mission, said he knew exactly what needed to be fixed them). Tony was talking, a faint speech bubble outlining words floating over his head, “… fix the left gauntlet, that was a hard hit,” and separating them from the words she could only assume JARVIS had said (since there wasn’t a second speaker), “… no data on that strike, the servers lost you for a moment after the EMP…”

The words ‘lost you’ were so heavily dug into the paper that Pepper wouldn’t be surprised if the artist hadn’t had nightmares over them. This was clearly the very image of the first time Steve realized Tony was human, for all his posturing, intelligence, and determination. It portrayed his helpless, hopeless joy, and fear, and hurt. 

It portrayed his love.

There was no doubt whatsoever in Pepper’s mind that Steve had loved Tony at that moment. He might not have known it, but it was true. And if she knew Tony’s moods (and she did, better even than the man himself sometimes) then she knew they hadn’t started sleeping together for another five and a half weeks.

Steve had loved Tony for over two months before the breakup. Tony had loved Steve even longer, though he hadn’t realized it until ten days after the picture. They had loved each other, despite the secret orders and relationship issues between them.

What hope was there when love wasn’t enough?  
*  
“He’s daring us, Sir.” Phil told his boss, his expression carefully bland. Stark irritated him, but he still liked the man, and what they had done to him didn’t sit well with the agent. 

Fury just arched one eyebrow eloquently. “I’ll have you know, we are not actually running a preschool here, as much as it felt like one with Stark and Rogers running around last month.”

“More like a junior high.” Hill commented from where she was standing by the door. “HR got quite a few complaints about the states of the janitorial closets. The cleaning staff declared they hadn’t been contracted to clean up that.”

Phil tried to keep from laughing at her dry tone. He mostly managed, but the serious tone of the conversation was almost totally gone.

“Hill, enforce protocol Alpha-ten-two-two-delta-triangle-square-squared.” Phil drew his brows together at the odd string of characters his superior had just spewed. Written down, he’d probably have gotten it wrong. He knew that was the point, but it raised some interesting questions about just how high above his unusually high clearance this meeting would be.

Hill nodded and left the room. “The room’s lines with telepath-blocking metals, and there are no security cameras hooked up to the inside. It doesn’t even have any ventilation, so all meetings held here must be under ten minutes. Now, I need to get you up to date of exactly why we let the Stark situation get to the point it’s at.”

Phil nodded and settled into his chair. He’d been wondering, and now it looked like his questions might be answered. He needed to make the most of these ten minutes.  
*  
Steve knew that in certain situations, rules could be bent a little bit. Still, it didn’t really make him any more comfortable with his present situation.

“James! Grab that end of the beam and give me a hand, man!” He moved quickly to help the foreman, being careful to not take enough weight to make him curious. He was sleeping on the man’s couch at the moment, so being grilled about his past was certainly not something he wanted.

The man’s name was Dave, and he’d offered Steve a job that paid cash and a place to sleep for a little while. Considering he’d basically washed into town with nothing but the clothes on his back, Steve had been over the moon. There were really only two rules on the man’s generosity: He’d better not be running from a child (a bad relationship was one thing, but a child was a responsibility that went beyond the conception sex) and that he brought nothing illegal under Dave’s roof. Both he’d been able to swear to with a clean conscious, and so he found himself being an actual productive member of society for the first time in his life (not counting the army). He’d never really put in a good day’s work for a good day’s pay the way people talked about before. Soldiering wasn’t something one did 9-5, and he’d mostly been at loose ends in the new world.

He was using Bucky’s name, but he was sure his old friend wouldn’t have minded. Considering his own name was all over the internet and that there were a million and one blurry paparazzi shots floating around too, it had seemed too much like tempting fate to use his own name.

Being a construction worker was fun, even if he didn’t really socialize with his coworkers much. He just didn’t have enough in common with them. His popular culture was either out of date or rather more appropriate for the white collar set, and he’d never used any technology between ‘ancient’ and about three steps beyond cutting edge. One man had just gotten the latest iphone, and one of the women had needed to show him how to change his ringtone. It was nothing compared to what he had been using, before he’d left his phone at Tony’s. Even the latest Starkphone was something Steve recognized as being that ‘outdated piece of crap’ that he’d gotten Tony to teach him to use so long ago. 

“Hi!” He’d said, giving Tony his best smile. “Hill threw her hands up in disgust and sent me off to find you. Apparently I ask too many questions for just learning how to work a phone, and you’re the only one that really understands them.”

He’d been expecting an arrogant response, or even an outright dismissal. What Steve hadn’t expected was the startled look, replaced for a moment by a flash of compassion before settling into a faintly arrogant grin. “You’re Captain Rogers, right? Pull up a seat. These things really aren’t as complex as people make them out to be, no need to be scared. My tech doesn’t actually bite. Unless you want it too, of course. I could probably come up with something for you that would bite…”

“No! No, I’m fine.” He’d squeaked out, face going red from the expected but still surprising innuendo. 

“That you are.” Stark had replied, patting his hand as he grabbed the phone. “Tell me what you already know, so I don’t have to waste our time going over it. You might have all day, but technology isn’t going to revolutionize itself, you know.”

It had been a prop, since Steve had already learned how to use a phone. Hill had just procured him one of the Starkphone prototypes SHIELD managed to grab before they came on the market and sent him down, confident in the knowledge that there would be enough new features on that one for Steve to at least start a conversation with Tony.

It had worked, Tony actually taking (despite his words) the whole afternoon to show him. This had included taking him to the lounge and showing him how this one app turned the phone into a wii controller through a hack (Tony insisted he’d only written the app because the regular SHIELD agents had a real talent for loosing the actual controllers, and apparently MarioKart helped him think) which had turned into a Star Wars marathon once Tony’d made some crack about Padawans and Steve had gotten confused. 

By the end of the night they’d been on a first name basis, and Steve hadn’t laughed so hard since before being frozen. He hadn’t missed the little looks Tony was giving him, though, and the man had an almost unhealthy obsession with touching Steve. Obviously, he’d thought at the time, Tony was just being charming to butter him up to slide between the sheets. He’d read all about the man’s proclivities. 

‘By any means necessary,’ Had continued to play in his head as he’d smiled back at one of Tony’s jokes. For the good of the country, he could even do this. It was to save lives. That was all.

“James!” Dave’s voice broke him out of his memories, and he gave his boss a sheepish grin as he resumed moving.

“Sorry, sir, just got lost in my head for a moment there!” He grinned at the other man, doing his best to look cheerful, but Dave rather obviously wasn’t fooled. He watched Steve carefully for a moment, but only shrugged at the end.

“Pay attention, would you? The house won’t frame itself.” Steve nodded, but knew his memories wouldn’t stay away. Construction work left his mind far too free for that.

“You look like a man who’s lost everything.” Dave told him as they celebrated a successful first day on the job with a few beers. “I recognize the look. I had the same one when the ex-wife left. She took the kids with her, everything. I fought for years to get to see them, but they said they didn’t want anything to do with me. Not even ten, those two, and their mother had been telling them how awful I was for years.”

“Why did she leave?” Steve couldn’t help but ask, curious despite himself.

“She found a new lover and they moved to the next city. I had a business and everything, I couldn’t just drop it all to chase her. That’s not fair to my workers or my bosses.” The old bitterness is heavy in the man’s voice. “They’re in their twenties now, my brilliant children. I still don’t ever really see them, but at least my daughter calls now and then. I still send gifts for Christmas and birthdays, but that’s never enough. When you’ve hurt someone you love, no matter that you didn’t mean to or had good intentions, there’s never any enough.”

“No, there isn’t.” Steve agreed, handing his new friend another beer.

Dave took it, but didn’t drink it immediately. Instead he just stared out at the horizon for a few minutes. “I know you aren’t really a James. I don’t know what you’re running from, or why, and as long as the police aren’t knocking on my door, I won’t ask. Just… remember to tell the people you love that you love them, even if you don’t think they want to hear it. It helps to say it.”

“That’s not a mistake I’ll make again, sir.”

He didn’t think he’d ever get a chance to make things right. Dave was proof that even those that deserved second chances didn’t always get them. Steve had done this to himself. There would be no second chance for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my computer deleted my first draft halfway through. That means there probably will be little inconsistensies due to me not remembering if something came in a previous chapter or was part of the first draft. Sorry. Also, I hate re-writing and that probably came across a little bit in Tony's section. It's somewhat terse (his was originally much longer, but I was hoping to get this out yesterday.)
> 
> Also: can anyone explain to me how to get italics to work properly here? Or do I honestly have to go and personally put them by every part that I italicized?


	5. Chapter 5

Things were never as simple as people would like them to be. Take SI, for example. Pepper was the boss, but she didn’t have ultimate power. She had to listen to the board, she had to appease the investors when they got their entitled panties in a twist, and she had to balance all the divisions as far as resources went so that the company could continue to attract and retain the highest quality of employees. 

Or take SHIELD. Director Fury would like people to believe he ran the whole thing himself with an iron fist, but that simply wasn’t true (not that Tony wasn’t still planning on blaming him anyway, but the point is valid). Phil Coulson was far more directly in charge of field assignments, and Maria Hill knew every little bit of their day-to-day operations. Fury was much more involved in the politics side of things. He was the one who talked to the WSC and the President. He was the one who met Senators and Ambassadors. Despite ‘ruling’ his little empire, Fury was the one who needed to take orders.

So these nets are there, and they affect everything. It’s like that six degrees of separation idea that people were always talking about nowadays. Somebody convinces her friend to whisper in her husband’s ear and he brings it up at golf and suddenly the wheels are turning and businesses are changing. 

Tony knew all of that. He also knew what that meant: Senator Sterns was the front man, not the power behind the idea. Someone had told him Tony was a bad risk. Someone had continued to bleed that into his ear until he was willing to put his career of the line to take Tony down.

That person was Tony’s new target. 

He didn’t have SHIELD’s contacts in the underworld, but he did have his own informants on the black market. There were people who would traffic drugs, guns, and resources without batting an eye who had second thoughts about selling things like the Jericho missile. Tony had started by finding the Ten Ring’s shipping company and had worked from there. Information would be harder to trace than his weapons, but the theory was the same. 

What he did know, thanks to the nerd set looting the Pentagon for secrets, was that the true backers probably weren’t American. He had suspected, since Iron Man was a little less of a threat to American expansionist leaders. That meant he needed a little more diplomacy and a little less showboating.

Plus an in.  
*  
“Well, well, well. Tony Stark. To what do I owe this surprising honour?” Whitney Frost steepled her fingers like the master villainess she was and gazed curiously at her old lover.

Tony smiled at her, a grin she remembered loving before they’d chosen their respective careers over their relationship. The fight had been extraordinary, but they’d both mellowed over the intervening years. “I know you’re too smart for me to pin your activities on you, but I’m not here as a beacon of justice. I’d never try to put you away, Whitney. Well, unless you turned from running an illegal business and into actually physically harming people. Then we might have a little bit of a fight on our hands.” He leaned forward, matching her posture deliberately. “Someone’s trying to take me down. Someone with power, and money, and influence. Someone hidden. I need to know who that is.”

She raised one eyebrow elegantly, even though she knew it couldn’t be seen through her mask. Tony had always told her he didn’t mind her facial scarring, but that didn’t mean she was showing off a weakness to a potential threat. “I haven’t heard anything about that.” She said, telling him the perfect truth. Regardless of them ending up on opposite sides of the law, she wouldn’t have ignored a threat to him.

“Stane dealt with the Ten Rings specifically, but he wasn’t their only backer. Not all of the weapons they had were on the hidden shipping manifests I found. Vanko was supposedly working on his own, but think about it. You know how hard it is to get, store, and ship weapons-grade palladium. He was living in a tiny shithole of an apartment with a sick father and an addiction to the drink. There’s no way he should have had access to those materials, or the funds to buy them. Someone knew about his father’s association with my father, and they used that to try and have his anger take me out.” He sat back in the chair, suddenly looking tired. “I don’t even know if it’s an Iron Man thing, a Stark Industries thing, or a Tony Stark thing, but it is a thing. Someone is after me. I know you probably don’t know anything now, but you’re the only person I know who I could bring this too. Everyone else is either above board or untrustworthy.”

“What about SHIELD?” She asked, knowing Tony had previously encountered the secretive operation. Fury was a bit of an urban legend open secret in the underworld, and him showing up at a doughnut shop to talk to Tony had made the rounds.

SHIELD apparently teaming up with superheroes had made a lot of people in her line of work highly uncomfortable.

Tony quirked an eyebrow. “I did say ‘untrustworthy’, Whitney. Do try to keep up. I haven’t even pulled out the big words yet.”

She couldn’t help the slight upward tick of her lips. Tony tended to have that effect on people. “They’re government.” She pointed out.

“They’re also lying scumbags.” There was a startling amount of venom in his voice, and that was all it took for the pieces to fall into place.

“That ex of yours, the most recent one. He’s SHIELD.” It wasn’t really a question, but Tony nodded anyway. 

“Army and SHIELD, yeah. His handler was all SHIELD, though.”

She snorted. “I thought they were supposed to be smarter than that, both the fucking you over and the getting caught at it parts.”

“So did I. That’s why I used to work with them.” So that was the way the wind blew. Whitney had wondered why he hadn’t tried to access SHIELD’s resources. The infamous Black Widow, for example, had probably far more informants in her web than Whitney did. 

She nodded slowly, doing some rapid calculations. “Two of my suppliers in Asia have been shortchanging me, but they’ve got hackers good enough that I can’t prove anything. I could hire mercs to take the top tiers out, but I’d rather not collapse the whole operations. I need what they give me. Figure out who specifically is calling the shots, and I’ll send my feelers out. We’ll meet in two weeks and discuss the particulars of the trade based on how much success both of us are having.”

Tony nodded. “I suppose you won’t do me the favour of telling me which organizations they are?”

She just smiled grimly at that. “Imprudent. This way I can still say I’ve never heard of them when you turn on me.”

He laughed, the damn man. “I wouldn’t turn on you, Whitney. That wouldn’t do anything in the long run, and I have no idea who would step into your place. Better the devil you know, right?”

That was a lie. Everyone turned eventually. It had been years since she was naïve enough to believe otherwise. “Everyone has a price.” She informed him icily, dismissing him with a flick of her fingers. 

Contrary, troublemaking man that he was, he just went. She still wasn’t sure what she thought of that.  
*  
Darcy was good with her Taser, but there were limits to what even a kick-ass girl could handle on her own. She cursed the friend she’d gone drinking with for getting lucky, even though she’d encouraged her to leave with the hottie that was chatter her up while they were in the bar. 

Three burly guys had a way of changing a girl’s mind like that. Maybe she’d let that incident with the aliens go to her head a little bit. Note to self: Taser does not make one invulnerable.

She screamed, but one clamped his meaty hand over her mouth quickly. She bit him hard enough to bleed, but he didn’t let go. Panic was welling up in her as she flailed ineffectually, much to the amusement of her tormenters.

A sudden clang caused everyone to pause, then the creep that was touching her had his eyes roll back as he crumpled to the ground next to a slowly settling trash can lid. She lifted her eyes fearfully to see a wrathful blonde dressed in black leather and dark jeans advancing on the group. The other two thugs turned their attention almost entirely to him, so Darcy exercised the better part of valour and ducked out of the center of the brawl that was coming. She palmed her phone in one hand, dialing what she hoped was 911 without looking. 

She was sure her rescuer was about to get creamed. After all, two on one were bad odds, and Darcy had lost her taser earlier in the encounter.

It was rather scary, then, to see the blonde take out the other two with almost contemptuous ease before turning to her.  
*  
Steve had almost forgotten how good it felt to hit something. There was something primal and enjoyable in feeling his fist connect with something else. He hadn’t even gotten to work over a punching bag since his breakup (three weeks, two days, twelve hours, and forty-nine minutes). An itch he hadn’t even realized was building under his skin was flowing out with every strike, and he almost felt like laughing.

The wastrels attacking the young woman were no real challenge. He almost felt sad when the second one went down even faster than the first, only his exultant joy in the physical activity and his distantly noted knowledge that the girl was now terrified of him prevented that. He turned to her, giving her his most charming smile (the one he used on Tony to convince the manic genius to put down his project and cuddle with Steve until he collapsed from exhaustion and he really shouldn’t be thinking about that now). “Are you alright, ma’am?”

The young lady gave him a shaky grin obviously meant to convey confidence and let her talk her way out of the situation. “Ma’am? How old are you?”

He shook his head, still annoyed at how often things he considered basic manners got that question asked. “Twenty-six, just raised polite.”

She tilted her head to the side, obviously considering him. “That’s a Brooklyn accent. I thought the only people who still spoke like that came from the bible belt.”

“Well, they say you learn something new every day.” He shot back, the vibration under his skin that had disappeared while fighting coming back with a vengeance. He felt bad about it almost immediately. The poor girl had just been through quite an ordeal, and here he was, snapping at her for no reason.

He was making a career out of bad choices, wasn’t he?

To his surprise, she laughed. “Okay, this is officially the second weirdest thing I’ve ever been involved in. What the hell, I’m drunk and this is interesting.” She offered him an arm. “C’mon, blondie. Let’s go get a coffee.”

Steve took her arm hesitantly, still unsure of himself around women. “The second weirdest thing?” He asked, not sure if he really wanted an answer.

“Yeah, I tased a Norse god after my boss hit him with a car the summer before last.” Steve choked on a laugh and started coughing. He’d heard of Thor through SHIELD, but he knew he couldn’t let the girl know that. “Yeah, so having a polite New Yorker bombshell swoop out of the darkness and rescue me only comes in second. Seriously, that summer was the shit! Except the government took my ipod. That part sucked.”

“Yeah, they have a thing for wanting tech they don’t own, don’t they?” He asked, laughing along with her as she stumbled towards an all-night diner a block away. 

“Oooh, you mean that thing with Tony Stark? That’s just shitty for him, isn’t it? I mean, he’s got to have come up against espionage before, but they were like serious! I wonder if I can find his number somewhere? I should call him up so we can drink and whine about the government being sticky-fingered little creeps.” She was still staggering, prompting another laugh from Steve. He finally got her through the doors and sitting down, glad she was light enough not to make people stare. “I want pie.” She announced loudly, looking around for the waitress. “Can we get pie?”

“We can get pie.” Steve agreed, especially since the pie here had been recommended to him by the guy he’d gotten a lift to this town (he didn’t even remember the name, all of them blurring into one after so many weeks). “Just don’t order too much, okay? I’ve only got about twenty bucks on me.” He was never going to get used to that not being able to feed him for a month, but that was part of this future (Tony’s world).

He wrenched his thoughts forcibly away from that track, focussing instead on his companion. She was gazing at him almost sharply, and he got the feeling she wasn’t quite as foolish as she seemed. “You don’t have debit?” She asked, tilting her head to the side. “Or a credit card? What happened, the government come steal your identity like they did my tunes?”

Steve huffed out a laugh. It was closer than any lie he could come up with, and she was probably drunk enough not to remember, anyway. “Pretty much. I’m hoping if I keep my head down that they’ll move on.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “So you’re some sort of wandering, heroic nomad, then? Showing up to protect the virtue of damsels and then feed them pie?”

“The pie was unexpected.” He replied, grinning. She shrugged and moved on, telling him all about the ipod she’d lost. Steve listened as much as he could, but his mind kept returning to her comment.

Captain America was gone, but there were still bullies. There were still wrongs to be righted. There was no one to take up the shield, but could the world possibly have a spot for a Nomad instead?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My God, that was a pain to write! Halfway through Steve's section my muse went on a hostile strike and *refused* to be placated. Anyway, this chapter is finally done, and I'm working on the next. Sorry for the wait!


	6. Chapter 6

Whitney still had her feelers out, but there was just too much information. The people who wanted Tony Stark dead, disabled, or controlled far outweighed those who stood behind him out of the world’s power players. There was some nutcase in Latveria who had a hard on for every costumed hero (because apparently four archenemies wasn’t enough for him), a few old business rivals that Tony knew wanted him dead, varying between the laughably incompetent Hammer to the much more dangerous and subtle Stone, the leaders that had been fighting in the wars he’d stopped, and a few religious zealots who saw world peace as counter to their god’s design. 

It hadn’t taken him long to figure out who her suppliers were, and only a little more time to learn which ones were cheating her. This was excellent news, as he discovered interesting anomalies in their files that made his pattern recognition senses jump. He couldn’t pin down why he was interested in what they were hiding, he just knew that it was somehow important. That meant he needed to dig deeper. Luckily, no matter how clearly you pointed out that no firewall was truly proof against a sufficiently curious nerd, people insisted on keeping online records. Fury had paper-only files, but he was the only one Tony had found so far. 

Tony himself didn’t both with paper most of the time, but the only way to access his private servers was through JARVIS (or to hack a shifting security algorithm that involved pi, e, the atomic clock, and the number of times ‘pattern’ had been said on the weather channel over the last ten minutes. Even Tony could only manage it half the time before JARVIS caught him, and he knew what all the variables were based off of). It meant many of his private projects were location sensitive, since file transfers were a total bitch to manage, but it also meant no one had managed to hack Iron Man yet, even when Rhodey accidentally gave Vanko an in with the War Machine suit.

It also meant no one was aware of what his bracelets could actually do. 

They were stamped with a caduceus and a clock, denoting his arc reactor’s job as a pacemaker for anyone with eyes to see. Pepper and Steve (who he really had to quit thinking about) had both argued with him about this, thinking it made him more vulnerable to display things like a weak heart so openly. He’d made the counter-argument that no one would willingly stick a glowing chunk of metal in their chest without a damn good reason, especially since he’d been trapped in a cave at the time. There was no way that anyone intelligent enough to want Tony for anything more than a ransom would be unaware of the possibilities around it, and they were unlikely to care unless they wanted him in decent condition for something. 

Tony was betting on a different scenario, one the illustrious Black Widow would probably approve of: Anyone who was willing to risk making an enemy of Tony was likely arrogant and cruel enough to want to leave him with proof of just how damaged he was and just how thin the thread they were dangling him on was. The bracelets offered a much smaller chance of miscalculating, while still providing him with the mental anguish of knowing how flawed and helpless he was.

Tony was betting his life on his eventual captors (none of his personas were safe. Someone would get to him eventually) being cruel enough to let him keep his medic alert bracelets.

JARVIS was, for the most part, in favour of this plan. Like Tony, he was a creature of logic. He had run the numbers, same as his creator, and had come to the same conclusions. While everyone else ran around trying to make sure he wouldn’t be captured, Tony and JARVIS instead assumed he would be and did their best to figure out how to get him out. One such failsafe was the immediate release of an alert for Rhodey should the Gallium hidden within solidify, putting pressure on and activating tiny beacons. The risk of accidental activation was deemed minimal, since anything that put Tony’s body temperature below 303 K at his pulse points was probably killing him anyway from hypothermia.

Another special feature was the microcircuitry that would call the suit to him no matter where in the world he was. The commands were sent on a wavelength that wasn’t considered very useful, since only Tony had so far managed to make power sources that were powerful enough to make the signal worthwhile. He could even hook the beacons up to the reactor with wires curled around the casing if he needed a boost.

There was also a homing signal built into the reactor, but that was for truly last resorts. Tony didn’t want anyone finding out about that one, and his medical bracelets and the fact that he never took them off were open secrets now, despite him wearing long-sleeved shirts (and usually jackets) when out in public. 

All of this was very important, as Tony had a history of doing stupid things. However, when you didn’t have any backup you could rely on, sometimes you needed to take the bull by the horns. Even stupid things were a better choice than just waiting for life to catch up with you sometimes. Having fallbacks in place meant one could take the opportunities presented the first time they knocked. “You ready, JARVIS?” He asked as he straightened his bow tie in the mirror of his luxurious hotel suite in Japan.

“As much as I am capable of being prepared, I am. May I remind you again that getting yourself into the stronghold of the local Yakuza branch is possibly not the best way to approach this problem?” The AI’s voice was laced with a concern that many would assume him incapable of having, making Tony smile.

“It’ll only be for a little while. I have plans, and they think my employees do most of my thinking. I’ll be alright.” He soothed his companion, the only person he could trust to have his back on this.

“If you say so, Sir.”

“Worrywart.” He scolded good-naturedly, looking himself over in the mirror critically. “Well, showtime. Let’s go get me kidnapped.”   
*  
Nakahara Guiro had very little use for a man so foolish as this arrogant American loudly demanding his freedom. If the man wished to be safe so dearly, why would he have ditched his guardians? The media proclaimed this Stark Anthony to be the most intelligent engineer in the world, but Nakahara was sure any brains the man had been born with had been rotted away with his years of debauchery. He was the child of a famous weaponsmith, on the other hand, and any faults would have been carefully covered up.

Despite his clear stupidity in every other aspect of his life, however, there was no denying the man could come up with deadly and elegant weapons. That was something his bosses wanted, and Nakahara would give it to them.

A simple search discovered the odd enhancements to the designer’s watch, shoes, and belt. These were stripped from a steadily more panicked Stark under Nakahara’s careful eye. All the rest of his clothes were turned inside out before being returned, so as to keep from damaging such a valuable prize through such pedestrian means as hypothermia or pneumonia. Who knew what that glowing circle did to his lungs, after all? It wasn’t in the man’s medical file (which had been hacked as soon as they’d captured him). In fact, there was very little information on his weaknesses on any database.

His wrists, though… Those spelled his failings out for the world to see. 

It was against regulations to let a prisoner keep anything metallic, but there was no way this posturing fool could possibly use those against his foes. Nakahara would put money on him not even being able to fight. He certainly hadn’t shown any physical ability when he’d been brought in. Stark had powerful arms and strong abs, but in all likelihood those were more the masterpieces of his personal trainer than his own.

He grabbed the prisoner’s wrist and inspected the metal encircling it with a sneer. “Proof that such a heartless man truly was born lacking.” He drawled, switching to English at Stark’s confused look. Nakahara put his hand over the arc reactor, a fierce and terrible joy breaking through him at the naked fear in his captive’s eyes. 

That would teach this dog to underestimate them.  
*  
With the resurgence of heroes in the form of Iron Man and the Fantastic Four becoming public, it was no surprise that whispers of a vigilante named Nomad spread through the internet. There were only a few blurry pictures to his name, just enough to tell people that black leather and blonde hair graced a body professional football players would pay to posses. The rest, his ‘gorgeous baby blue’ eyes, ‘impeccable’ manners, and ‘gentle’ touch, were often dismissed as the fantasies of the women he rescued. 

Not that he only rescued women. He had a soft spot for children and old people, but it seemed he could come to the rescue of anyone. Proof of that was when he’d appeared out of nowhere at an Arizona high school and gave a pants-wettingly firm lecture to a group of young people teasing another boy. He had been polite, especially to the young women in the group, but had left them all so ashamed of their actions they’d immediately deleted any recordings, not wanting others to witness a close-up of their disgrace. 

Unlike most costumed heroes, who picked a city and stuck with it, Nomad was ridiculously difficult to pin down. One day he’d be in Ohio, then he’d duck up into Washington, then a few days would go by before he showed up again in South Dakota or Wyoming or even Texas. He spent a full three days in Denver chasing down and beating up almost all of Hell’s Angels after a bar brawl went bad, then disappeared for a full week before he surfaced in Miami, halting a purse-snatching against a little old lady. There were pictures filling tumblr of him having a cup of tea with her afterwards. Most comments seemed to think he was braver for wearing black leather in summer than for chasing down crooks.

All speculation on him ceased for a while when news broke that Tony Stark, America’s own Iron Man, had disappeared on a trip to Japan. The superhero watchers turned their attention to this new development, and it wasn’t until a few days later that people thought to compare Nomad’s most recent altercations with his previous actions. The results were inescapable: Nomad had turned downright vicious when Iron Man didn’t make it back to the USA on schedule. 

He was also headed straight West, predictable for the first time in the months he’d been active. Speculation was rampant, but eventually it was decided that Nomad was a Stark fan that had taken someone kidnapping his idol seriously. He, like many others, would probably be lining the streets when Tony Stark appeared again, buzzing over heads in his full Iron Man regalia and posing for pictures.

After all, who wasn’t worried for Iron Man?  
*  
Steve dozed against the window of the truck he was sleeping in. A Coca Cola delivery driver had agreed to give him a lift to Phoenix, where they should be arriving in just over two hours. It was difficult to go exactly where you wanted when relying on other people, but hitchhiking had been the perfect mode of transportation while he’d been wandering aimlessly. There were always quick cash jobs as plain labourers hanging around if you knew where to look. Steve had grown up during the Depression. He knew where to look. 

It helped that he could go for days without sleep, and months on just catnaps. Eventually his lack of sleep would catch up with him and he’d be laid out for most of a day, almost impossible to wake. He was willing to push himself to that point, though.

Sleep meant dreams, and dreams were full of Tony.

It was bad enough when they were memories, or wishes for the future. Waking lonely and cold after a night dreaming of a smiling, cuddly Tony was hard, especially since he knew it was all his fault that this imagined future would never come to pass. Helping out as Nomad was cathartic, but there was no substitute for a love like that.

Then Tony had disappeared.

‘Kidnaped’ was whispered and broadly hinted at, and Pepper didn’t deny it in an interview. Steve knew there was nothing he could do, but he needed to be in Los Angeles when Tony showed back up, buzzing buildings and floating through a drive-thru. He had to see for himself that Tony was alright.

He would be alright, Steve reminded himself over and over. This was Tony Stark, one of the strongest, cleverest, most bull-headed, and toughest people Steve had ever met. For all he was a civilian, not a trained soldier, Tony would never hold back, never go down easy. He gave everything he did his all, and Steve refused to believe Tony’s best wouldn’t be enough to get him out of this latest scrape.

If you hadn’t fucked up so royally, A hateful voice whispered in the back of his mind, You could have been with him. You could have given him backup, prevented him from being taken altogether or been there to watch his back during the escape.

Steve didn’t want to acknowledge that voice, but he knew it was probably true. Tony had been betrayed by every person close to him at one point or another. He wasn’t arrogant enough to assume he had broken Tony, a feat not even Colonel Rhodes and Pepper had managed that time Tony’d been dying (and Steve had been busy being frozen in ice, not even able to offer a shoulder to lean on), but the man would be licking his most recent wounds. For Tony, that would mean withdrawing from all contact, even that which was meant only to help him. Ducking his bodyguards wasn’t unexpected, under the circumstances.

“It’s a privacy thing.” Tony explained, in a rare talking mood that involved saying things of consequence. Tony could speak for days without saying a single worthwhile thing, yet another trick Steve hated because no one should grow up that jaded. “After all, if even Pepper and Rhodey can’t stand to stick by me all the time, it’s only a matter of time until the bodyguards get a better offer, too.”

“No man is an island, Tony.” Steve replied, saddened. He’d grown to think of Tony as a friend, despite his orders. “You can’t watch your own back all the time. It’s not a weakness to rely on others.”

Tony just shrugged, clearly dismissing Steve’s concern as ‘that’s your life, not mine’ the same way he did when Steve protested spending hundreds of dollars on gourmet dinners, only to ignore the leftovers in favour of day old coffee and calling out for pizza. “That’s what I have JARVIS for. He’s always in my corner.”

Steve hadn’t meant to prove Tony right again. That had actually been why he’d put off telling him. Steve had known from the first day he realized he loved Tony that telling him would result in Tony hiding in his lab and refusing to see Steve at all. He’d just been hoping that the fact that he’d chosen to tell Tony of his own accord would win him some points, enough that Tony would come out of isolation at least willing to listen to him. It would have been a long road back into his good graces, and the suspicion and hurt would have killed Steve in the meantime.

It would have been worth it, if only Steve had gotten Tony back in the end.

Now he was left hoping desperately to be one of the many people gathered to see Tony’s triumphant homecoming, knowing that being part of the crowd would be the closest he’d ever get to the man again. He was left clinging to the little he could do, promising himself to live by the ideals Tony had always ascribed to him, the ones even a true hero like the genius had to try to stick to. 

Steve had always found it easy to stand up for the right thing. He’d had good role models in both his neighbors, who banded together so no one got left behind when the markets crashed, and in the memories others had of his father, who had died doing what he believed right for the sake of his pregnant wife. By the time it was obvious Steve was always going to be the smallest guy in any given group, he was in the habit of doing what was right. People expected it of him, and it was easy to live up to their expectations. The hits he took had nothing on the feeling of knowing his parents could be proud of him, even if he was sickly and weak.

Tony, on the other hand, people had expected the worst from since he was a child. Too smart, too young, and very, very stubborn, people tended to clash with him just to prove they could get the better of him in some way, even if it was just that the papers called him a ‘brat’ and them ‘long-suffering’. His best role model had eventually tried to kill him. He’d had to invent what it was to be a good person for himself, because he’d simply never learned it before. Not for lack of trying, just lack of opportunity. Once his eyes had been opened, he’d gone against everyone to try and make the world a better place, including his best friends and a man he considered like a father.

Steve couldn’t even stand up to SHIELD.

So instead of having a chance to help Tony change the world, he was busy beating up handsy drunks and chasing down petty thieves. In a ridiculous costume made of black leather. While women and men across the world giggled over his abs. 

Those war reels had been full of shit. There was nothing dignified about fighting the good fight. From wearing tights and heels to making ridiculous speeches, nothing had ever embarrassed him as much as his attempts to help anyone he could.

Maybe he was doing it wrong. 

The black leather was bad enough (it was the most protective and sneaky clothing he could get his hands on), but the yellow gloves and open shirt were even worse. He was so glad he included a face mask in the original design. He hadn’t meant to include those two things, but life seemed to have it out for his clothing choices lately.

The gloves at least served a purpose, protecting his hands and keeping fingerprints off of crime scenes. He just wished the first pair he’d gotten a hold of hadn’t been bright yellow, elbow length, welder’s gloves. They matched his hair, a fact that most people seemed to think he’d considered. He’d actually been completely unaware of it until he’d seen a newsflash on one of those trashy celebrity shows that had discussed it. Extensively. With expert testimonials and callers phoning in their two cents (really, what was with America these days? How are there even jobs as fashion forecasters?). He’d been embarrassed enough at that to stop wearing them, only to be talked into getting a new pair as a gift from a very nice lady and her children after he’d laid her ex-husband out for attempting to break into her house (Steve had thought he was a robber at the time, and had been worried for the children). After that he just couldn’t bring himself to abandon them again.

The open chest thing, though, was a direct result of the serum: Most stores didn’t have clothes that fit him. He was too muscular and too toned for off-the-rack clothing to fit properly. With things like t-shirts and jeans it wasn’t such a big deal. A belt could deal with having to buy a size larger to pull the things up over his thighs. For his crime-fighting outfit, though, he couldn’t take that chance. Loose clothing gave too many options for entanglement.

The closest he could get to a leather shirt in his size was on sale at a sex shop (and hadn’t that been an interesting trip? He was surprised his face wasn’t still bright red, despite Tony having briefly made him aware of those sorts of toys so he wouldn’t be surprised to discover Tony’s collection by accident). It was just a touch too small, but Steve really did need the thicker material to feel safe going into battle like he did. It was nothing like even his wartime uniform, but he didn’t heal quickly enough that blood loss couldn’t be a factor, and Tony wasn’t the only one without backup. He’d figured the thing was close enough, and had bought it.

He hadn’t counted on the buttons ripping off two fights in.

It hadn’t even been anything impressive. Steve had just swiveled to avoid the careless slash of a knife and accidentally almost taken out the kid’s eye with a button. After he’d taken the belligerent addict out, he’d carefully collected the buttons and sewed them back on. Then it had happened again. And again. He was careful, but fights were never easy on the clothing, and the shirt was too small to begin with. Eventually he’d stopped bothering, after one particularly forward young lady that he assisted had helpfully ripped his shirt open for him, whining about how covering his chest should be a crime.

The comment had made him miss Tony so bad he’d had to run away and sob. He wasn’t ashamed of his tears, but Nomad couldn’t cry in front of people. Nomad was a hero, and he needed to be strong.

Tony. His thoughts had come full circle, back again to the man that still held his heart, for all he didn’t know it. Steve’s thoughts always circled back to his ex-lover, as much as he tried otherwise. There was no aspect of the future that Tony hadn’t touched in Steve’s mind, and reminders lurked around every corner. 

He turned his attention to the scenery, willfully banishing the sleepiness that was creeping up on him. His regular dreams were bad enough, but with Tony missing they’d often turned to nightmares of him being held, terrified, and tortured. All because Steve hadn’t been there for him when he needed someone the most.

Steve couldn’t ever be there for him like he wanted to, but perhaps being close would help. Distance hadn’t, and if it wasn’t for the serum Steve would have probably been hospitalized for extreme exhaustion by now. 

He just needed to know if Tony was okay. The world would be fine as long as Tony was okay.


	7. Chapter 7

People always underestimated Tony Stark. Even if it was just thinking Tony couldn’t count cards while totally sloshed, they always did it. Right from being a child and those whispers that his circuit board and motor were at least partly designed and built by his Father. There were the kids at MIT that figured he’d be a fifteen-year-old lightweight that he’d drunk on the table, the people who figured he’d never be able to lead his company as well as his Father, and those who were of the opinion that he would never be able to turn his life around.

Yes, Tony Stark was used to being underestimated. That these idiots would underestimate _Iron Man_ , though, burned him up. He was a goddamn superhero. Sticking him in a room and putting guards on the door would never be enough to hold him.

Especially when there were outlets and lights in the room. Seriously, giving an electrical engineer famous for his tech access to the building’s power sources was just beyond overconfident. It skidded fully over the line into downright stupid.

The first thing he did was cover the cameras in the room. He purposely ignored one of the hidden ones and made sure his covers slipped on a few others, just to give them a tantalizing glimpse of what he was doing. Considering how they’d consistently fallen for his feckless playboy mask, he reasoned that there would be a good chance that they’d just let him do what he wanted, laughing all the while.

Well, laughing for a while, at least.

He paced and fidgeted, running his hands through his hair and cursing. He threw himself into one of the corners they could see and let his shoulders shake like he was crying. He grabbed his wrists over his medic alert bracelets hard enough to turn his fingers white, then shook them out. He got up and started pacing again before throwing himself into another corner with a tortured moan.

This corner, though, was one that was both protected from the cameras and contained an electrical outlet. It only took seconds to use his nails to unscrew the cover (say what you like about the decadence and femininity of getting a manicure, but whatever clear gloss they put on his nails at it made them as durable as many of his tools, and was actually a great help in the workshop) and expose the actual outlet.

It was the work of moments to make a mess of exposed wires that would easily catch anything around it on fire and push it back into the wall. Then, using the hole where the outlet was, he was able to boost himself up to the ceiling vent (there were rumours that one of the SHIELD agents lived in them, but Tony didn’t believe it. They were certainly useful for escape, though). With his foot wedged in the wall it was easy to pop it up and over, a feat that would have been almost impossible when jumping. 

From there it was easy enough to pull himself up and shimmy into the vent. He had told Steve, once, that his leaner 5’9” frame was as much a benefit as the super-soldier’s ridiculous 6’3”. It was a tight fit for him in the vents. Anyone larger wouldn’t have stood a chance.

He could already smell the distinct scents of burning drywall dust and melted plastic. He scooted faster, though he still tried to keep the noise down. There would be time to hurry when the alarms had gone off and would cover his movement.

He wondered, briefly, if they would have come for him in the event of a real fire. There probably wasn’t enough in the walls to really burn, not with the current and positioning he had to work with, but they’d have trouble trying to find and shut down the source. Still, it was a legitimate concern, and…

_Whoop Whoop Whoop!_

Showtime. He abandoned stealth and threw himself as fast as he could through the vent, following a mental map he’d made before getting caught. It might be a somewhat open secret in some sectors that this was the local Yakuza headquarters, but they hadn’t actually built the building. There were still specs on file from the business that had operated out of here years before, and Tony would put money on them not having done much to the architecture. For one, it was hard to do. For two, it was expensive. Third, and most importantly, the previous owners had built cars in here. That meant there were facilities meant for stress tests and the other noisy, dangerous, and fun things engineers do when they have even half an excuse. Facilities that were buffered extensively from the offices, so a bit of overly-enthusiastic demolition wouldn’t bother the executives. 

There was no way, short of tearing down the building and starting from the ground up, to build a safer building. It was hard to blow up or infiltrate something specifically designed to withstand explosions and corporate espionage. 

Hence why Tony had gotten them to invite him in themselves.

He’d done his homework. The least power drawn to the building was between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM. That meant they did their dastardly deeds during regular hours, for the most part. He could understand that. Between circadian rhythms and Vitamin D deficiency, there was no way to effectively run a business any more sophisticated than a few thugs and people with back-room chemistry sets by operating at night. There would still be people, of course, but they were probably either around the holding cells or in the offices. Since he was headed to the labs, he should be pretty safe. Even if all the lights were off, he carried his own with him at all times.

JARVIS was on alert, and had already had a tendril into their systems. As soon as the fire alarms had sounded, a virus had been let loose in the system that would shut down all security measures, from the cameras down to the magnetic locks on doors. 

Once he was in the engineering department he dropped from the ceiling and started running down the halls. As expected, they were empty. He went straight for the deepest, most secure room, certain that he would find what he was looking for there.

He was right. There, lying on a table in clear view of all the workstations, was one of the gauntlets from the Mark I. He knew Stane had gotten his hands on all the Ten Rings had found, but it looked like he wasn’t the only one. Someone, probably someone high up in the Ten Rings hierarchy, had been an undercover Yakuza (or whoever they were working with. He was leaning towards collusion himself). That explained some of the disappearing shipments he’d been tracking (Hammertech, he was more careful with his stuff now). 

It wasn’t all the answers, though. This didn’t fit the Yakuza’s style. They were a human organization that had little interest in the more war-like attempts to take over the world. As a foe, they were better matched to SHIELD than any of the superhumans wandering around. Iron Man and them didn’t even operate in the same spheres. That meant someone else was buying their contacts and knowledge. 

He caught sight of an insignia in the corner of one set of blueprints (wouldn’t work, the wiring would melt before enough power could make it through them to be effective) and felt his heart sink.

He knew that design.

*

Natasha swore softly in her mind as the fire alarms went off, quickly followed by the power going out. She was busy with her infiltration, but couldn’t resist the urge to go see what was causing the disturbance. 

She didn’t really need to check, though. She’d overheard a few lackeys bragging over having been on the team that captured some rich, book-smart, and arrogant American. There was only one person who fit that description, could have done this damage to the facility, and who was supposed to be in Tokyo for the weekend.

She hoped Happy hadn’t been hurt when his employer was kidnapped. He was a little condescending, but was also friendly, competent, brave, and dating Ms. Potts. Natasha had really enjoyed working with the other woman while undercover at SI, and knew that an injured boyfriend on top of a missing Stark would make the week that much more work for the redhead.

Natasha slipped down to the engineering levels, sure she knew what Stark was after. It was a connection she could have made for him, if it hadn’t meant blowing her cover and turning traitor to her adoptive country. Enough people still watched her out of the corner of their eyes. She didn’t need to give them a reason.

Sure enough, there was Stark, exiting the deepest lab. There was a flickering glow coming through the door behind him, and she was sure he’d just burned away all the information the Yakuza had ever collected about the Iron Man armour.

HYDRA would not be pleased. They hated having to say something twice. She grinned at the thought. She was going to be the one who got to scream at cowering, apologetic mobsters. There was a reason she liked infiltrating hostiles better, despite the extra danger of the missions. There was something to be said for not having any stake is keeping people friendly. It was much easier to just be a hard-assed bitch, rather than trying to walk the fine line of BAMF spy and decent, respectable person. She’d managed with Stark, until Sterns and Rogers had messed it up for Fury.

And speaking of Stark…

She trailed him silently as he worked his way up, careful to herd him in the safest direction. She had no idea _why_ they were headed to the roof, but she knew enough not to ask. No SHIELD agent was welcome around him at the moment, regardless of if they were actively trying to keep him safe or not.

Her questions were answered when they made it to the roof, and a night camouflage Iron Man met up with its creator. Natasha was impressed. She’d seen the best tech offered by Russia, China, Japan, and the American Government. She lived on a flying aircraft carrier, for crying out loud. It took a lot to impress her, but Stark always seemed to manage.

He swooped away, somehow silent even when flying. Natasha bit her lip, considering if she needed to contact SHIELD with this information immediately, even though her next scheduled safe contact period wouldn’t be for another few days. Fury would want to know Tony Stark was going undercover himself for a little bit… But no. Sanderson wasn’t the only agent with divided loyalties. Natasha wasn’t free, Clint wasn’t free, Coulson was to busy for long-term field work, and she wasn’t entirely sure if the brass would consider this important enough to send Hill. Sitwell might be fine to handle this… No, there was just too much opportunity for this to go very badly for SHIELD. Stark wasn’t an unreasonable man, but he was a justifiably cautious one. Three strikes, and they would be out.

She’d leave Stark alone for now, but she’d keep an eye out and do what she could for him. If the Avengers initiative ever did get off the ground, she wanted Iron Man standing next to her. Now that he wasn’t dying and being stupid about it, there wouldn’t be a better choice for air support.

Natasha didn’t really believe in God, but at this moment she wished she did. Then she might think praying for Stark would somehow be helpful.

*

“What do you mean, we still don’t know where he is?” Director Fury asked icily, staring around the meeting room. Several of the younger agents looked away or fidgeted, but Coulson and Hill just stared at him, completely unimpressed. “Do you mean to tell me that even with all of our resources and contacts, we still can’t keep tabs on one measly inventor? It’s not like he has any history with covert operations.” No one spoke, so he gave a disgusted sigh and sank into his chair. “Dismissed.”

Everyone but his left hand and his right hand quickly filed out. Coulson got up to check on the door, ensuring it was fully closed and that no one was lingering outside. “You were a little harsh, there, Director.” He offered up blandly, though there was a faint note that turned it into a question for those who paid enough attention to notice.

Hill snorted. “Two have been bought out by various politicians, not realizing how slippery that slope is. Another one is sending secret messages to an unknown agency. We’re working on cracking who they are, but don’t know yet.” Her fingers beat a steady _one-two_ on her thigh, and it was only years of training that kept Coulson from paling. There were only twenty people at the meeting. Six of them being double agents was a ridiculously high number, and he couldn’t help but wonder why now, not a few months ago or a few months ahead. That it was considered a security risk to give the true number in a closed door meeting with just the three of them was worrying enough. Adding that to the debacle that lead to SHIELD losing both Stark and Rogers…

Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy. They were at three.

He did have some good news for them, though. “We’ve gotten contact from our agent operating out of Tokyo this week. They ran into someone from a previous assignment, though they were able to keep their cover up. They don’t anticipate running into the variable again, though there is always the possibility. They’d like to have their mission upgraded two levels. I’ve already approved it.” _Agent Romanov saw Stark in Toyko. He’s in control of the situation, and she is still hidden from him. She’s keeping tabs on him as much as possible, but would like emergency evacuation teams ready to go should the situation change._

“As long as they’re still undercover, I don’t see why they would bother us with it.” _Good. Teams we can vouch for will be in position as soon as we can manage it._

There was something to be said for working with the same people for years. Sometimes you didn’t need something as complex as an actual code to get sensitive information across.

*

_The trouble with working for cash_ , Steve thought, glaring at his assigned gun, _is that you can’t always get decent jobs or good employers. I’m almost wishing I’d stayed with Dave!_

There was nothing for it, though. Unless he was able to whine his way into a job as an exploited hotel worker, he was stuck with the work he’d gotten. The pay was at least good, though he was sure that had more to do with keeping people willing to work in such a dangerous profession than it did with generous employers. 

Steve Rogers had never thought his live would get to the point where he was willing to work as a hired thug. Oh, sure, the official name was ‘bodyguard and errand runner’, but most of those errands involved breaking kneecaps of people that didn’t pay up. And the people he was ‘guarding’ during his assignments were the same ones he chased down and delivered to police at night when he changed into Nomad.

He was only two days into the job, so it’s not like he’s actually _seen_ a lot of it yet, but all the signs pointed to seriously seedy business practices. He’s perfected the innocent, simple face that had people feeding him as a child, and it had luckily worked on making his big, bad bosses think he was simple.

It had also gotten him a grudging couch to sleep on from his assigned partner. That man scared Steve more than his dubious employers did. A permanent look of intense focus made him seem solemn and a little scary, even though Steve probably had fifty pounds on the guy. Carl, the man in question, also moved like a true athlete, something he apparently owed to having been a circus performer in his youth. There were plenty of snickers behind the man’s back due to it, but no one was willing to make an issue of it to his face.

Steve figured Carl knew what the others said, he just wasn’t willing to risk what had to be a pretty sweet job for someone of his qualifications over something so petty. After all, how many jobs in the modern age didn’t require literacy? None that paid this well, that was for sure. 

He figured he could pass himself off as headed to an assignation with a hired girl if Carl ever asked about the time he spent out of the apartment, and that would do for a reason for his Nomad costume should it be discovered. He didn’t really think Carl would go through his stuff, though. The man was totally uninterested in what Steve was doing at any point in time, unless it interfered with his own life. He declared channel choice entirely his on the TV and had no problem walking into the bathroom to take a leak while Steve was showering, but Steve found he couldn’t mind too much. There was just something so _natural_ about Carl’s lack of boundaries that Steve knew it wasn’t anything personal.

Besides, he’d put up with a lot more than a gloomy roommate and bosses who ran on the other side of the law if it meant he could be right here, in Malibu, when Tony came home.

Because Tony had to come home. He _had_ to!


	8. Chapter 8

Tony had spent months on his new armour, longer even than the Mark II. This one didn’t have a Mark name, and was kept under an entirely different part of his filing system, despite JARVIS being near un-hackable. He’d hidden it in with records of Dummy’s upgrades under the name ‘bad coding’ (he’d _actually_ cleared out all of Dummy’s bad coding years before, letting him keep his personality through choice instead of laziness, but he didn’t expect others to understand that). 

The memory of just how much effort he’d put into hiding it was the only thing keeping him from doing some fun-type flying after leaving the compound and really testing the suit out. He’d missed this, swooping through the air with gleeful abandon. The last time he’d gone for a fly just because he could had been… With Steve, so months ago now. He’d been so buried in his hurt and so focussed on his new mission that he hadn’t gotten an opportunity to head out for a little recreation.

Now wasn’t the time for it either, no matter how giddy he was at once again having gotten out of a kidnapping situation all by himself. He had plans, now that he’d discovered a link to people interested in him to the point they were willing to pay a mob to work outside of their usual zone. 

He flew West, out over the ocean. JARVIS was piloting, using GPS, since Tony couldn’t see anything. Not that there was much to see in the middle of the ocean at night, but it still made him jumpy. He’d never done well with sensory deprivation of any sort, his trust issues too serious for him to enjoy it even in a sensual way.

_It’s just JARVIS_. He reminded himself silently. _I can always trust JARVIS. I built him. He’s totally loyal to me._

_ Then again, that’s exactly what Nefaria expected of Whitney, and look where that got him… _

He shook his head just as JARVIS returned control to him, his night vision showing more that the hypnotic motions of the waves now that they were over dry land. He silently praised his creation for knowing exactly when to back off and when to push. It was nice to have something loyal to rely on.

He touched down in an abandoned castle as quietly as he could, glancing about him in surprise. His latest intel had the owner of the sigil he’d seen on those documents living here, but it had obviously been empty for a while. A general air of decrepidness could be created, but there were just too many little things for him to accept that it was a front. There was the dust, the lack of heat signatures, and the beginnings of decay around wooden structures, but it was really the squirrels that tipped him off. He could see a couple of dens from where he was, and it was always difficult to train the contrary creatures to accept large amounts of people.

He floated in through an open window and walked quietly down the stairs. He didn’t see any sign of habitation, but he _knew_ this was where the Mandarin had been based. Six months earlier he had trailed on of the maniac’s goons to this location, but he’d been chased off by weird missiles (Tony hated magic. Had he mentioned that? He really did). His new armour should have rendered him invisible to normal radar and scanning methods, and he’d isolated a specific frequency that should throw off magic emanations. This should have been the perfect chance to sneak in and do some spying.

It looked like someone had expected him, though.

Tony stared around him and sighed. There had to be _something_ …

He’d already gone through all the trouble of getting himself kidnapped, so he decided to make the most of this opportunity. JARVIS would help, but it was still going to be a pain to go over a whole castle with a fine-toothed comb. He’d give himself two weeks, though Pepper had already received a message he’d pre-recorded and had JARVIS send as soon as the new suit had come to him telling her that this was Iron Man business, and that he had protocols set to inform her if the suit went non-responsive. Basically that as long as she didn’t hear from him, he was fine and that she shouldn’t bother to look for him.

He’d give himself two weeks before coming back. Any longer and Pepper wouldn’t be able to keep the press away, and speculation would hurt SI’s stocks. He trusted Happy to keep her centered while Tony was gone, like no one had been able to do during Afghanistan. It was amazing how much faith the man had in him, really. Rhodey was on deployment, but Tony was sure Pepper would keep him informed too. His buddy would worry of course, the mother-hen, but he’d let Tony have some time to do things his own way before starting to look. 

That took care of everyone who would worry about him personally. He didn’t care about the others (would Steve worry? Tony didn’t know, didn’t even know what he’d prefer. He loved the man enough to want him _not_ to worry, but the hope that he still might refused to be quashed). He _didn’t!_ He was Tony fucking Stark, and he’d been flying solo for the last twenty years. This was nothing new. He could do this.

He’d be _fine_.

*

_ It was a just a regular meeting, though there was no schedules with work like this. Yannik hadn’t even had anything interesting to report to his superiors, other than whispers that the Mandarin was in quite a temper for the last few days.  _

_ There was no explanation for why he suddenly found himself flanked by two other foot soldiers, carefully but insistently herding him away from the barracks, towards the donjon. _

_ He questioned them, feigning confusion and worry with perfect ease. He’d trained from birth for his job, learning to suppress actual emotions and to fight like a wildcat. Acting lessons, voice lessons, disguise lessons, Yannik had taken them all. _

_ Anything to better serve HYDRA. _

_ The others didn’t respond, and all he could read in their body lines was boredom. He let himself get more chatty, making stupid, inane comments and trying to cajole them into conversation. It didn’t work, of course, but it was the type of action his persona would do in this situation. Yannik would never break cover. He was one of the best soldiers in HYDRA for a reason, after all. _

_ His guards ushered him into the Mandarin’s audience chamber, locking the door behind him. He fidgeted, though he was mostly bored. Even if the Mandarin had him figured, Yannik knew he’d be able to fight his way out. His target was a mastermind, not a warrior, and Yannik had trained with his guardsmen. None were good enough to stop him. _

_ He fidgeted, knowing his own poise would be out of character for who they thought he was. The only thing he hadn’t decided was if he ought to kill the Mandarin before leaving, or if HYDRA would be happier to have a known variable in power in this arena. _

_ “Well, if it isn’t one of my little moles.” A voice almost purred from behind him. Yannik shouted and jumped, but inside all he really felt was a little annoyance. He was impressed with how silent the secret door must have been, to deposit the Mandarin right behind him without a sound, but he didn’t like being snuck up on (not didn’t like, like implied emotions. Was professionally displeased with his performance?).  _

_ “M-m-mole, sir?” He squeaked out, playing spooked to the hilt. _

_ The Mandarin patted him on the head like a child, and Yannik allowed it. A simple gesture towards dismissal didn’t offend him, and did in fact mean his character was being treated as he ought to be. _

_ It was just prudence that he decided in that moment that the Mandarin would die. _

_ “Yes, mole. You’ve been reporting to someone the whole time you’ve been here, all two years. Last night I decided to clean house. Your attempts at subterfuge are amusing, but I can no longer keep you on just for entertainment.” _

_ Yannik opened his mouth to stammer out a denial, only to discover he couldn’t. He could barely get his mouth open, let alone manage words. His arms wouldn’t move, and he could feel his legs locking up even as he sprung into action. _

_ His kick unbalanced him, and he fell on his ass with a soundless grunt. The Mandarin stood over him, gloating, and he suddenly felt all the terror he’d been suppressing since he was three and his Father had explained how only the toughest men were worthy of serving the greater good and HYDRA (his family had served for four generations, entered early into the breeding program in order to facilitate the spread of good genetics). It was like someone had opened a tap in his head, and all he could do was scream silently, his muscles knotting with the force of it. _

_ He almost didn’t even feel it when the Mandarin’s personal guards surrounded him, systematically and thoroughly breaking bones until he no longer had any hope of escape. He recognized one of the guards as someone who went through training two years ahead of him. The man didn’t even attempt to help him or pull his blows, but Yannik understood. _

_ HYDRA was more important than any one soldier. _

_ “Enough!” The Mandarin finally cried, causing his guards to fall back. Yannik was left on the floor in front of him, gasping in fear and pain, even though his injuries already felt one step removed, as if they had happened in the past and he was just remembering. _

_ He was dying, and he knew it. So did the Mandarin. _

_ “Any last words, weakling?” He gloated, and Yannik felt whatever was keeping him still fade. “None shall find your body or know what happened to you, so if you wish to beg it will be between only you and me. I might be merciful and give you a swift ending.” _

_ “Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.” He ground out, his ribs shifting (when had they been broken?) and blood spraying from his lips. “Hail HYDRA.” He pushed out the tooth they gave every member during the initiation ceremony and cracked it open. _

_ The Mandarin howled in anger at having his toy taken from him, and he blasted the body with the powers of his rings anyway. “Take away this scum! Bury him where he won’t even have the honour of feeding my fish or lawn! He is a coward, to choose to end his own life instead of enduring like a proper man!” _

Tony looked down at the body he’d discovered after digging up the hidden grave and chipping through the cement coffin he’d discovered there and whistled. “You really ticked off the wrong person, dude. JARVIS?”

“Considering your lack of interest in the biological sciences, would you rather review the recent SI footage while I perform the autopsy, sir?” Tony wasn’t really squeamish, but he also was really uncomfortable in the presence of death.

“That’s probably for the best. Let me know when you’re done.”

*

“Care to tell me what Captain America’s doing in LA?”

Coulson blinked in surprise. He’s expected Rogers to hang around the outskirts of the city, maybe stay one over. He hadn’t expected the man to run right into the heart of his ex’s hometown. However, for this particular agent to have seen him, he would have to be quite close to where SI’s main research base was.

“That was not anticipated.”

“Wanna guess who his boss is? It’s not like the guy has any ID, you know.”

… Okay, learning your idol was human and made mistakes wasn’t any easier the second time around. He didn’t even try to answer that question, already knowing his suspicions were entirely correct. After a moment, the agent continued.

“He looks to be sort of settling in. Nomad’s using insider info to go after people. Eventually someone will catch on, but I’m taking steps to prevent that for as long as possible. The man has an inexplicable talent for picking up followers, so the longer he has to get himself known the safer he’ll be.”

“You think he’ll stay past when Iron Man reappears?” Coulson asked, truly curious. He had no idea what Rogers would be doing next. The man continued to defy his every expectation.

There was a slight hesitation, and Coulson was pleased that he wasn’t the only one having a lot of trouble reading the elusive Captain. “I think so.” There was some wonder in the agent’s voice, and Coulson startled at it. “He has no intention to ever let Stark know he’s here, I’m sure of it, but he wants to _be_ here regardless.”

They were both silent for a moment. “It takes an awful lot to fully accept blame for something you did wrong, yet still move past it. To get to the point where you really, truly wish only the best for someone who used to be yours, and whom you still love… I’m not sure that’s something I could do, Sir.”

“That doesn’t excuse Captain Rogers’ previous actions.”

“What does? What will ever erase Stark’s past as the Merchant of Death? What will erase the Red Room and its mission? What about me, Sir? What will ever excuse me?”

Coulson was silent for a moment. “You have a point, agent?”

“Just this: if heroes were perfect, how could a human ever aspire to be one?” He let that sink in for a moment before continuing softly. “It’s okay to still believe, sir.”

*

Steve was almost giddy with excitement. He’d been getting a coffee after a long night when a sudden _whooshing_ noise caused him to look up. There, above him, was the exact person he’d been longing to see.

Iron Man, resplendent is his iconic red and gold, swooped through the streets seemingly at random and Steve felt like he could breath for the first time in weeks. 

He’d missed Tony, he knew it, but there was a difference between knowing it and _seeing_ the man he was in love with. For just a moment he imagined he could draw attention to himself, get Tony to see him. Tony would have swept down and scooped him up bridal style, but even that embarrassment Steve thinks he wouldn’t really have minded. 

The crowd is running after him now, chasing him towards SI, where he will probably make a spectacle of himself. Steve takes off with them, though he’s careful to keep hidden in the crowd. He knows JARVIS can do some amazing things, and he’d really rather Tony didn’t know he was there. This was a triumph for the golden vigilante, and Steve had no right to ruin a day so totally his.

The buzzing irritation that had led to him becoming Nomad in the first place had been back, making Steve miserable for a full week. He’d gone on missions he’d _known_ were likely highly illegal in the service of some men that more resembled thugs than the leaders they proclaimed themselves. Even ducking out as Nomad to chase down and take out a few of the worst offenders wasn’t enough, not with Tony missing.

He’d almost jumped a man for sneering within Steve’s hearing that Tony had probably just run off with some model, and that the kidnapping was all a hoax. _No!_ Steve had wanted to scream. _Tony’s a good man! He’d never do that to Pepper!_

He knew most people wouldn’t see through the professional mask she wore, but Steve _knew_ her. He’d gone on double dates with her and Happy when he was with Tony. She was worried, but not quite tearing-her-hair-out scared. He wondered what that meant. Probably that Tony thought he had the situation, whatever it was, under control.

He should have been there. They’d been discussing it obliquely, but Steve was stubborn. He’d have worn down both Tony and Fury until he was cleared to go on Iron Man missions with Tony. The genius needed someone to watch his back, as much as he protested. If not for _fucking Sanderson_ he’d have had Tony’s back, have been with him for the last two weeks.

Not that it was really the agent’s fault. The man was just doing his job, as incompetent as he was at it. No, it was Steve’s fault. He had no one to blame for his present situation but himself.

As he stared at Tony unmasking to thunderous applause, though, he couldn’t help but feel calm and happy. Tony was alright. That was really all Steve needed to know for everything to be good in his world. Even the failure of their relationship was nothing but a distant hurt at the moment.

It should have been scary, but Steve was unable to feel anything but euphoria at the moment. He would cross any river, climb any mountain, and endure any hardship for Tony, even if the man didn’t know it.

He was a master tactician and had super strength. The idea that Tony could just point and Steve would jump put an unimaginable amount of power in the already overflowing hands of someone with money, power, and Iron Man.

It was probably best that Tony would never know this. He was a good man, but he was probably still furious with Steve (please, _please_ don’t let him be totally over it yet!). There were limits to what temptations even good men could resist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... I promise they *will* actually see each other face to face again. Actually, I'm fully shocked that they haven't yet. This wasn't supposed to have taken so long.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am *so* *sorry* that this took so long. There are all sorts of reasons, but it really just boils down to a serious case of writer's block. I'm still not entirely happy with this chapter, but something needed to give. I hope you enjoy it anyway and that you haven't given up on me. I haven't forgotten this, I promise.

Tony was shaking when he got back to his Malibu mansion. He desperately wanted to deny what he'd seen when reassuring his adoring fans that he was alright, but JARVIS didn't make mistakes. Especially not ones like this. He was sentient enough to know what a mistake like that would do to Tony.

"JARVIS, confirmation." He croaked out, pleading with his creation to tell him no, tell him the sensors had gotten it wrong...

"I'm sorry, Sir, but the Captain has a very distinct and unique set of data for my scanners to use for him specifically." Right. Tony'd forgotten he'd done that. It was supposed to make it easier for him to spot Steve in the middle of a battle, and he'd forgotten to remove it from the sensor arrays (a lie, he wouldn't forget something like that...). "There really is no doubt that it was Captain Rogers to your SouthEast today at your showing." 

His AI's voice was hesitant and concerned, and Tony wished, with a blinding intensity, that JARVIS was real and he could get one of the hugs he'd received a few, covert times when he was growing up (because Jarvis the human was 'just a butler' and Tony was 'too old for that nonsense' and fuck you Howard!). He knew Rhodey and Pepper were in his corner, but they were busy! It was bad enough he'd called them away from their very important jobs the last time he'd had this breakdown. JARVIS, though, was almost omnipresent in Tony's life. He wouldn't have to explain anything, or pretend to be strong, for his creation because JARVIS was there and he already knew, and... And... 

Fucking HELL!!!! Why did Steve have to show up again now, just when Tony was getting used to not having him around (he wasn't, his nightmares were back and that really wasn't an arc reactor malfunction that made his chest hurt and that stupid shield was still propping up his particle accelerator, the thing he used to make his heart)? Did he think he could just waltz back into Tony's life (no, he'd made no effort to make himself visible. If anything, he'd appeared to be trying to hide)?

Well, he wasn't going to give the man the satisfaction of knowing he'd struck a nerve! He might break down in private and drink to what he'd thought could've been (what he had wanted, had craved... what he had thought he'd finally found), but he'd be dammed if he was going to let anyone know. He'd just keep away from Steve, make sure he didn't run into him by accident. He'd forget the man was in the city, or Steve would get bored and wander off (2.3 days. If he'd only shown up to see Tony the once, he'd be gone by then) and then he could get back to playing man-about-town and flirting with all the pretty girls.

"JARVIS, where is St-Rogers staying?" He had to know to avoid him, right? It wasn't like Tony was stalking him. He was just... being proactive about guarding against a potential stalker. Right?

"I'm afraid I have no data on that, Sir." JARVIS's voice was the careful neutral that actually meant he was annoyed, causing Tony to frown.

"What do you mean, no data? You can't expect me to believe the Holiday Inn has better security than you can handle."

"No, Sir." The snippiness of the comment was as much a tell for JARVIS as it would be for a human. "What I mean is that there is no mention of a Steve Rogers in any hotel, motel, hostel, boarding house, or barracks within four hours of the location where you saw him earlier today. Nor is he registered for such activities as 'couchsurfing'. I am still decrypting some of the SHIELD files I've pulled, but none of them mention anything about sending Captain America out."

Tony nodded, mulling over the possibilities. JARVIS was smarter than most humans and possessed both his own mind and an understanding of people and society that still baffled Tony at points, but he was still a computer. If you asked what a shoe was for, most constructs would only ever reply, "footwear". JARVIS might add, "a hammer, a doorstop, and a projectile", but that was only because he'd seen Tony use it as such. He'd never think of decorating powerlines or planting flowers or 'shooting the boot' (a disgusting challenge, but the older engineers had cheered and praised him when he completed it at only 15). That, the ability to extrapolate and improvise, was why Rhodey was dead-set against unmanned aircraft. 

"Expand SHIELD search. Look for any mention of Captain Rogers, not just in recent mission files. Also, find out where he is. Hack store cameras, follow his credit and debit cards, track his phone GPS, whatever. Just find him. I can't..." He choked up slightly, but soldiered on. JARVIS wouldn't judge him. "I can't run into him unexpectedly. I need to know where he is and why he's here. Find him for me!" JARVIS, bless his mechanical heart, didn't respond to the desperation in Tony's voice.

God, Malibu was supposed to be his Steve-free sanctuary. Now the very person he wanted so desperately to avoid (he couldn't do something stupid like fling himself, sobbing, on the other man if he never saw him. Right?) was right in his goddamn backyard! He was Tony Stark, though, and he would not run. Not from Steven Rogers, not from anyone.

He stroked his armour in an attempt to calm himself. He was Iron Man, and a broken heart had never stopped him before. He would weather this storm, and come out proving that Stark men are made of iron.  
*  
Business was going both very well and very poorly for the shadier side of LA. Tourists continued to flock towards Iron Man's usual haunts, making easy targets of themselves. Holes had recently opened up in the higher levels of various mobs and gangs due to the presence of more and more super-heroes. There was never any shortage of young bucks willing to fill the holes, all convinced that they were smarter and luckier and more ruthless than their predecessors. 

The real smart ones, though, were one step removed. They were the semi-legitimate businesses that catered to the lawless. They provided services to any number of individuals, and as such had deathly strict non-competition clauses against working for any prospective employer or and competition that employer might have. 

One such business was famed for having utterly amoral bodyguards. It didn't matter to the employees if they were working for a starlet, a crooked businessman, or a mob boss. As long as they got paid and the target listened to their orders, they would guard anyone with their lives. Any caught backing out were slain by their fellows. After all, the business had a reputation to maintain.

It was a life that many had to be eased into, but it was simple enough to weed out the useless ones. Even their hardened veterans looked askance on any client that had already gotten people killed, though. For all the money was great, no one wanted to work for Justin Hammer. The man was irritating and treated the bodyguards like the lowest of servants, but it was really the fact that he'd gotten two of their fellows killed and a dozen more remanded by federal agents that had everyone backing down from the opportunity. They could be assigned, but it really was better when people volunteered.

The lack of volunteers was the only reason they agreed to send the new guy, James. Carl had shrugged and not said anything, which was as good a recommendation as he ever gave. There was a group of eight, so even if he was some sort of plant there would be insurance. Besides, what were the chances of that Hammer guy getting involved with yet another international terrorist?  
*  
His mistake last time had been involving someone else. He’d thought that crazy Russian had had the same goals as him, but obviously that had been incorrect. His plan had been focused, with a clear target and reachable goals. Vanko hadn’t had such clarity, insisting on inflicting as much harm as possible on Stark with no interest in what would happen after. Vanko’s after had probably involved a dead Stark. That was a waste. What point was there in tearing down a foe so methodically unless they were there to watch helplessly and writhe in humiliated agony at the end?

His goals hadn’t changed, but his methods, by necessity, had. There would be greater scrutiny on him now, where before his wealth and influence had shielded him. He couldn’t be so direct, flaunting his hatred like he had. Never mind that it was only to his guards, hired from only the most reliable and discreet agency, and that crazy bird-man that had seen it, it was still beyond what he could afford to display. 

It wasn’t hard to get a fix on who the redhead who had undone all his schemes was. He didn’t know how Stark had come to employ the ruthless and lovely Black Widow, but he must have. Why else would she have appeared in his entourage, after all? Stark must have suspected. Perhaps even the crazy he himself had ended up hiring had been a plant. Not that the Russian’s hatred had been fake, but why had he crossed paths with the man? How had someone that much of a mess made it all the way to Monaco?

There was only one explanation: Stark had set it all up. He’d hired the Black Widow to entice Vanko to the race, switched with his driver so as to be more noticeable, and then released her again just in time to foil the plot against him. And wasn’t Rhodes some friend of Stark’s too? He’d bet anything they’d set up the reported failure of the Ex-Wife missile. There was no way that wouldn’t have blown the whole Expo sky-high. He’d tested it extensively.

Curse Stark and his showboating and schemes! This time, this time, he’d show that slimy ass who was better! This time he’d be smarter, take his time and gather allies before striking. This time he’d cover all his tracks twice and thrice and even four times before he made his move.

This time the illustrious Tony Stark wouldn’t even see his doom coming. Justin Hammer would take him completely by surprise, and the upset would be glorious.  
*  
Steve had always gotten good references as soon as he’d finagled himself a chance. That first step was never easy, but he’d been almost pushed through as soon as he got his foot in the door. That said, it really shouldn’t have come as such a surprise when he realized he had what looked like a definite flair for villainy.

He was apparently good enough at bodyguarding, reading situations, and responding to orders that even members of the mafia were starting to notice him. He had no loyalties to anything other than his paycheque at this point in time, but he could see people plotting to change that. He was just too good for people to be okay with him being a free agent.

In a way he was lucky: his employers had a strict enough policy that he was able to turn down offers of a more permanent position without giving offence. The last thing he wanted was to be permanently tied to one particular organization. Nomad was making a name for himself without sticking to any one section of the city or finding himself any particular distinct nemesis. Already there were whispers, ghost tales that had him capable of turning into shadows in order to tail his quarry, or gave him ownership of legions of helper animals that reported on secret meetings, or even (his personal favorite) of being an inventor himself, like Iron Man, and that he had little mechanical bugs that not only spied on the leaders of the underworld, but could be commanded to crawl into someone while they were sleeping and pull them apart from the inside out (a ridiculous assumption. As far as he knew, that heart attack had been just that, even if it was a high-ranking member of the Hells Angels. Also, the body found eviscerated somewhere else was just regular gang politics. The same MO had been evident in a few killings long before Nomad had come to the scene).

It was exhausting, keeping up with all the different rumours going around about his alter-ego. Sometimes he wished he was as unremarkable as his roommate. Sure, Carl was reliable and discreet, but he didn’t have the menacing aura Steve’s instinctive dislike of everyone he was meeting through this job gave him. Nor did he have Steve’s height or bulk. Mostly, though, it was his lack of imagination that made him nothing more than competent. He’d almost lost marks to attacks with a bit of flair to them, simply because he didn’t think that way and always forgot to account for the fact that others did.

Carl, luckily, hadn’t been bothered by Steve’s quick rise within the agency. All he’d done when Steve had gotten picked for a lucrative one-night contract over him had been grunt that his rent was going up, now that he could afford to pay it. Steve didn’t know what he’d have done if his roommate hadn’t ended up being such a dull, complacent, and settled individual. The man was a great shot and Steve was always happy to have him guarding his back, but just being around him made Steve itch to improve his situation.

Still, he was doubly glad to be assigned as Carl’s partner in their latest venture. That solid, settled nature was something Steve was going to have to work to emulate when he was within strangling distance of Justin Hammer.

It was part of some cosmic karma for his sins that he needed to be pleasant around someone he wanted so badly to punch in the face. He’d been responsible for attempting to destroy the Expo Tony had worked so hard on, as well as being the genius who let a homicidal maniac near Tony the second time around, and now Steve needed to smile at his corny jokes and agree with his self-important posturing.

Hammer was going out of his way to make it seem like Tony and him were friends, and that the spectacle of the year before had been a misunderstanding and completely blown out of proportion. He didn’t fool Steve, though. His continued hatred for his declared peer was evident in the way his jibes, which were rude at the best of times, turned downright vicious against anyone who even mentioned Tony, his company, or Iron Man. It showed when Hammer flinched at the appearance of Starktech, as if restraining his urge to grab the offending item and demolish it. It slithered through the web of words Hammer wove while trying to reinvent the debacle of his last tangle with the eccentric inventor.

It was hard, harder than anything Steve had ever done, to listen to someone hate the man he loved that deeply. There were only two things preventing him from lashing out: One was that he knew he needed to be around when Hammer finally showed his plans, and the second was the reassuring and steady presence of Carl, who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in Steve’s brain should he make a move to harm their employer.

It was a good thing he had the other man to rely on, since his superior senses allowed him to pick up on clues Hammer wouldn’t have dropped normally. It was obvious to Steve that Hammer was planning something, though he still had only the faintest inkling of what it was. He was determined, though, that Nomad would stop it.

Really, it was only due to the mask and costume that Steve would even consider doing what he was now doing: Riding up to Tony’s Malibu house in the middle of the night with a message for a man he was sure wouldn’t want to see him. That was fine, though. JARVIS could pass the message on. That way Steve could in no way cause Tony distress (would he still be distressed to see Steve? It had been months, after all… What if the disguise was totally unnecessary? What if Tony had forgotten him, Steve, and only remembered Captain Rogers?).

He shook the thought out of his head viciously. It didn’t matter if Tony knew him anymore, it truly didn’t. Steve knew Tony, Steve would protect Tony, and Tony would hopefully never know Steve had done so. He’d go on to eventually meet someone who would realize just how wonderful he was, and Steve would follow their relationship in the papers, praying every night for Tony to be happy. That was all Steve wanted.

His hopes that he could perform this task anonymously faded the second he stood in front of the main gate. He hadn’t even reached for the buzzer before JARVIS’s cultured voice met his ears. “I’m afraid you are not on the list of allowed guests, Captain Rogers. Any further attempts to interact with any piece of his property will set of alarms and activate the security measures. Moving forward is probably not in your best interests. Shall I inform Sir you came calling?” The voice was colder than Steve had ever imagined an AI could manage, but he barely noticed the tone. All he could do was hear the words before panic set in.

“No! Please, JARVIS, please. Don’t call Tony. Don’t tell him I was here. Don’t tell him I’m Nomad.” He should have felt stupid, pleading with a computer, but all he could feel was fear. He wasn’t even sure what he feared. Hurting Tony? Fighting with him like they never did do at their break-up? Seeing hatred on that beloved face? Seeing confused disinterest instead of hate? “I just… I have a message for him. I want… I need for him to be safe. It’s… It’s Hammer, he’s going after Tony again. He’s gathering allies, and I think one of them…” He bit his lip, not wanting to say the words out loud, not wanting to make them real. It was for Tony, though. For Tony, he could do anything. “The buttons on the man’s coat. They were HYDRA. I don’t know how they’ve managed to last this long, but I think HYDRA is going to go after Tony.” He gave a self-depreciating laugh, looking down at his shoes. “Tony’s amazing. There’s not much I can do that he can’t. But please, JARVIS, let me do this. Let me warn him. I couldn’t bear him getting hurt, especially if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. I don’t know if he even knows HYDRA is still active, and he can’t guard against what he doesn’t know about.”

There was a moment of silence before the AI spoke. “You have no reason to be in Malibu. Are you stalking Sir?” The question was blunter than Steve was used to JARVIS being, but that made sense. Tony was the one who liked having interactions with his creation, while the idea to ask this sort of question was more something Tony’s friends would make him add. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that the code wasn’t as sophisticated in this section, especially since it likely got little use.

Tony wasn’t actually much one for paranoia. He said it was because he’d accepted that the world had it out for him while still a child. And since everyone was out to get him in some form or another, there was no point worrying about it. It just was.

Steve had wanted to prove him wrong on that, but had accidentally proved him right instead.

“No.” He answered, then amended it. “Well, yes. Sorta? I don’t know, I just… I needed to know he was okay when he disappeared. I knew he’d come back to LA, but I honestly never intended to approach him again. I figured I wouldn’t be welcome, and I didn’t want to crowd or worry him.” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I just wanted to be able to see him buzz the crowds with my own eyes. Then I heard about this plot, and I just couldn’t not pass it along. I can promise I’ll never attempt to make him aware of my presence, but… I’m just not sure I could live without seeing him again, even if it is from a distance.” He huffed out a breathless laugh. “Hunh. That sounded a lot less creepy in my head.”

“Undoubtedly true.” JARVIS’s voice had the familiar wry humour back in it, which Steve took as a good sign. “I will pass your warning on to Sir when he returns. I will endeavour to dissuade Sir from figuring out who came by. Goodbye, Captain. I hope we never need meet again.”

“You and me both, JARVIS. After all, that would mean he’s safe.” He hesitated, not sure if he was overstepping his bounds. “You’ll watch out for him? Take care of him?”

“I always do.”

Steve nodded. “That’s good. He needs more people who’ll do that for him.” He hopped back on the bike he’d bought cheap the week before and headed off.

“That he does.” JARVIS told the empty air. “That he certainly does.”


End file.
